>Greetings. Grateful for advice on current thinking about the taxonomy of
>Silvereyes/White-eyes on Lord Howe Island. Ian Hutton's book refers to
>the Lord Howe White-eye Zosterops tephropleura, and Simpson & Day agree.
>Christidis & Boles do not mention this species. Should we list it as Z.
>tephropleura or as Z. lateralis, the Silvereye?
Christidis & Boles defintely _do_ mention 'tephropleura', and they say on
page 76 that they maintain it in 'lateralis' (contra Hutton 1990) - in other
words they disagree with Ian Hutton.
Hutton's use of Lord Howe White-eye for Zosterops tephropleura (Z.
tephropleurus) confuses the issue anyhow, as there is an extinct white-eye
from LHI, usually called the Lord Howe White-eye Z. strenuus (Z. strenua).
The bit about whether the specific names end in 'a' or 'us' is about the
gender of the genus name, and Zosterops has been recently declared to be
masculine, therefore necessitating masuline endings to the species names.
But this is all nomenclatural minutiae - they're Silvereyes when it all
comes down to it!
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