To address two points raised today:
1 Rowleyi form of Striated Grasswren. A 2010 paper on grasswrens by
Christidis, Rheindt, Boles and Norman (Plumage patterns are good indicators of
taxonomic diversity, but not of phylogenetic affinities, in Australian
grasswrens Amytornis (Aves: Maluridae)) included genetic samples from rowleyi.
While it didn’t specifically address whether it deserves to be split, some of
the the results did suggest the genetic differences between rowleyi and other
forms of Striated Grasswren are comparable with those between some other
species pairs. Actually there have been quite a few papers on Fairy-Wren and
Grasswren taxonomy in recent times. Most are listed at this thread on Bird
Forums: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=178345 It is interesting
that this form was only described in 1999, whereas most of the other Australian
splits or potential splits have been known about for a long time.
2 Tasmanian Boobook. This is something I have been looking at recently. The
treatment Joshua refers to was first published in Handbook of the Birds of the
World. At the time Les Christidis said (see
http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/birding-aus/1999-10/msg00418.html ) that it
was based on a misinterpretation of some of his research. But having looked at
specimens, the Tasmanian birds do look more similar to New Zealand ones than
mainland ones. See these photos I took of specimens at the Australian Museum:
http://www.pbase.com/mklord/boobooks Frank Rheindt and James Eaton are doing
some research on genetics of Ninox owls which hopefully will shed more light.
The second edition of Owls of the World by Weick goes further and splits four
Boobooks – Tasmanian, New Zealand, Australian and Red (lurida). The absence of
any genetic samples of lurida, plus a lack of detailed research on how they
interact with other forms of boobook, makes it hard to assess the merit of that
treatment.
Hope this helps.
Murray Lord
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