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Message: <blockquote data-quote="njlarsen" data-source="post: 1583714" data-attributes="member: 7427">Personally, I am at piece with most collecting, but for new species description, I would want some type of population estimate before I think it is acceptable. There was a long discussion of this topic a few years ago starting with the news that someone was describing a new species after having shot the second bird of the species that he had ever seen. For more common birds, I would agree that small scale collection is not a big issue, but there are exceptions: I heard about a project looking at the hybrid zone between Red-billed and Black-billed Streamertail in Jamaica, where the researcher (a PhD student) collected first 40 individuals, and then wanted 100 more. That seems completely over the top, viping out the entire population of hybrids to study it. Niels</blockquote>