Basically it is all to do with gender - not of the bird but the name. in
Latin nouns can be male or female and the describing adjective (which is
what the subspecies bit is) must match the gender - and typically this
involves changing an -us or -um to -a or vice versa.
Look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclatureandscroll
down to Gender Alignment for a better explanation. IOC are just
correcting some errors (or introducing new ones!)
On 4 July 2012 15:11, Carl Billingham <> wrote:
> I'm too young/common to have had the classical education so I flounder a
> bit with Latin;-)
>
> I have noticed that the new IOC list has changed a couple of the endings
> on sub-species names. For example with the Shy Heathwren, cauta to cautus
> and halmaturina to halmaturinus. Yet the same endings haven't changed for
> other birds such as Little Wattlebird on Kangaroo Island are still ssp
> halmaturina. Can somebody please explain what the difference is and what
> the rule is for whether they should end with an 'a' or 'us'.
> Thanks in advance,
> Carl
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