It is very pleasing to see this description published finally. Congrats to the authors for getting it done and for having such a wealth of vocal, molecular, morphological, distributional, ecological and even nesting(!) data on this new species. I have the utmost respect for Jorge who had to deal with a number of difficult issues in bringing this publication to water.
The abstract does however include an extraordinary fabrication, which cannot have originated with the first author, and the paper incorrectly summarises previous research into the group. So here am I, complaining about Cuervo and Cadena papers again... for some of the same reasons as usual ...
Abstract: "Although specimens of this taxon have been available in museums since 1941, they were not carefully studied and were ascribed to different taxa of the latebricola and atratus groups."
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http://asociacioncolombianadeornitologia.org/wp-content/uploads/revista/oc6/doneganyavendano.pdf
Fig. 9 (p. 38) has a map showing this as a different species (sp.) with distribution shown.
Figure 10 illustrates a specimen as Scytalopus sp. alongside other taxa showing the differences.
Appendix 1 has a long list of specimens identified as Scytalopus sp. from Perija in Colombian and Venezuelan collections.
Appendix 2 contains biometric data for 28 specimens from Perija, broken down for males and females alongside data for other species and populations.
Text on pp.39-40: "Various specimens, most labelled “Scytalopus meridanus”, have been collected in the Serranía de Perijá (Appendix 1; Figs. 9 & 10). Although Krabbe & Schulenberg (2003) did not assign this population to any described taxon, Hilty (2003) and Salaman et al. (2007) treated it provisionally as related to S. meridanus. Plumage and biometrics suggest strongly that this population is related to either S. meridanus or S. griseicollis (Fig. 10). Although the Perijá population has been sound recorded (C. Sharpe in litt. 2007) and collected recently (Appendix 1), recordings were not available for this study such that we cannot make strong conclusions about its status. Perijá birds cluster closer with those from the Venezuelan Andes for biometrics (Fig. 8) and are differ from Eastern Andes specimens up to Level 1 (and, for southern populations, Level 2) in bill and wing length; and from the Yariguíes population in their shorter tail (Levels 1, 2, and 4). The Perijá population is isolated from nominate S. griseicollis populations and S. meridanus by the narrow, low-elevation section of the Andes in the Ocaña region which is a formidable barrier to high elevation fauna (Stattersfield et al. 1998). An undescribed Scytalopus taxon is clearly involved."
The authors of this description later state that that the new species had been considered "a subspecies related to S. griseicollis or S. meridanus based on morphology (Donegan and Avendano 2008)" which is simply an incorrect statement. It was called an "undescribed Scytalopus taxon" considered "related to" the latter taxa, and was labelled as "sp." (species) throughout the figures and appendices cited above.
I suppose these authors may be correct in that it could be considered quite "careless" of Jorge and I not to have just named this population back in 2008. However, whilst all the morphological data were available and clearly supported a description, we did not want to do so without vocal data as well. The authors of this paper have now thankfully managed to obtain and analyse sound recordings, clearly supporting species rank and they are to be congratulated for writing this up and naming the new species with so much other rich information. But it may have been more appropriate for them not to have bigged up their own contributions in this way or to have glossed so much over the groundwork made for this description by previous authors - whose work some authors had either clearly not read, just forgot about or decided to "edit out" of history as the MS progressed.
