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Taxonomy of Melithreptus honeyeaters

To:
Subject: Taxonomy of Melithreptus honeyeaters
From: Chris Charles <>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:10:16 +1000
Sand-groped Honeyeater
.....to reflect the no doubt exurberance the West will embrace a new endemic.

Chris Charles

33deg 47'30"S
151deg10'09"E





On 09/07/2010, at 6:21 PM, Michael Ramsey wrote:


Any suggestions or proposed common name?
Western White-naped Honeyeater seems a bit long.
Whitlock's Honeyeater sounds good, or Western Honeyeater perhaps.

From: 
To: 
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 21:39:07 +1000
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Taxonomy of Melithreptus honeyeaters

For anyone interested in such things, a paper has just been published which advocates splitting the White naped Honeyeater into two - the South West WA form becoming Melithreptus whitlocki.

This is no particular surprise; Christidis and Boles flagged the possibility and the latest Slater field guide has it as a separate species already. The paper advocates that treatment on the basis that genetically the two forms currently in White naped are in fact each more closely related to Black headed Honeyeater than they are to each other. While I have not read the entire paper, I don't think it says anything that would particularly support splitting Golden backed from Black chinned.

The citation of the paper is Toon, Hughes & Joseph 2010. Multilocus analysis of honeyeaters (Aves: Meliphagidae) highlights spatio-temporal heterogeneity in the influence of biogeographic barriers in the Australian monsoonal zone. Mol Ecol: in press. The abstract can be found at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/ journal/123571854/abstract

It also makes reference to an in press paper supporting the splitting of the Western Ground Parrot.

Murray Lord
Sydney
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