At 09:51 AM 10/30/2003, Marty wrote:
>So, although what Doug says sounds fair enough for my purposes, he is
>assuming the plesiomorphologicality of sound traits, and it is going to ge=
t
>trickier and tricker before AOU is done.
Whether a trait (a call, for instance) is plesiomorphic depends not upon
what the AOU nor any other organization says. There may be instances of
convergence (this is where two unrelated species or taxa hit upon the same=
solution to the same problem, and end up looking (or sounding) like each
other, even though they came from widely different heritage) but AOU is
going primarily on mitochondrial DNA, which is pretty accurate, I think. In=
the cases where I observed what I thought was plesiomophy and new DNA
indicates the taxa are unrelated, I'll assume it was actually convergence,=
which is just as much fun for me!
>Of course, in English we call the Spangled Tanager that name to correctly
>inform the layman that the bird is in the tanager family. When it becomes
>a sparrow what will we call it?
We'll still call it a tanager - just because the Thraupids won't have their=
family, they'll still exist and will still have traits that we think are
similar enough to give them a common name, if not a taxon. Not all
Emberizids will be called sparrows - think Bunting, Towhee, Tanager...
>There are no new world members of Otus anymore, either.
But there needs to be that split to indicate that the small owls in the new=
and old world did not arise from the same stem, don't you think?
Maybe this is a better discussion for rec.birds or Birdchat...
Doug
Doug Von Gausig
Clarkdale, Arizona, USA
Moderator
Nature Recordists e-mail group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturerecordists
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