Wim,
Thanks. Very interesting. Certainly looks like DNA is not the answer
to everything.
Carl Clifford
On 19/02/2008, at 8:31 PM, Wim Vader wrote:
I took part in the International Barcoding Conference in Guelph last
July, and was until recently (retired now) a member of the Norwegian
Barcoding Committee. So I can vouch for the great promise of this
method, even though for the time being we have to do it the hard way
and the nifty little 'barcoding machine' is very much a thing of the
future as yet. Australia is part of the large new programme, and Les
Christidis was present in Guelph.
But for large gulls the method has until now generated little light.
Both in N.America and in Norway most of the taxa of large white-
headed gulls have been barcoded (The American data have been
published, but I do not have the reference at hand, recently having
had to move both at home and at he office; while the Norwegian data,
by Jan Lifjeld, are I think as yet unpublished). In both cases , more
than 90% of the currently recognized bird species of the area had a
unique barcode; the other species belonged to two different groups.
1) Those where there were large intraspecific differences, and 2)
those were there were small interspecific differences. In the first
group there are species, such as Myrtle and Audubon Warblers, where
the eastern and western populations turn out to have a quite
different barcode. Similar cases are some woodpeckers and owls, where
currentkly Eurasian and american populations are reckoned to belong
to the same species, but where the barcodes show clear differences.
In the second group it turns out that e.g. all redpoll species have
more or less the same barcode, and the same, much more surprisingly,
goes for Common and King Eider! And all the large white-headed gulls
have almost exactly the same barcode!! Of course, the barcoding
segment is only a very small part of the total DNA, and one may
expect other parts to show netter differences. However, earlier
genetic studies in germany of Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls
showed very few differences also in large parts of the DNA. So I fear
that the Cooktown gull in the end needs to be identified using the
classic morphological characters; barcoding won't help, and DNA may
also be of little help.
Wim Vader, Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø, Norway
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