Ernst Mayr dies

["Stephen Ambrose" <>]

In addition to the comments by Andrew, Ernst Mayr also contributed a lot to 
Australian bird taxonomy in the 1930s -1950s. In fact, he contributed to our 
current understanding of subspeciation of most Australian passerines (e.g. 
see Schodde & Mason 1998).  I first became familiar with his work in the 
early 1980s when trying to understand subspeciation in scrubwren species, 
the White-browed Scrubrwen in particular. Amazingly, much of Mayr's taxonomy 
is still valid today, irrespective of the introduction of new taxonomic 
techniques such as molecular studies.
Stephen Ambrose