Hi Laurie,
I know that you are joking. You still triggered a response, although I wanted
to stay away from this discussion.
Hi Birding-Aus,
Regarding species concepts, there is a nice review by the late Andreas Helbig
and colleagues:
Helbig et al. Ibis (2002), 144, 518–525 (you can Google it and get a free pdf)
Maybe that helps a bit.
Taxonomy is very important and interesting for the scientific understanding of
relationships and evolution. Someone mentioned the former Herring Gull complex.
I think that this is an exciting example for how our past knowledge was proven
wrong regarding relations between taxa. Unfortunately, the term 'species' is
also very important for conservation. As an example, small isolated populations
on islands receive way more attention if they are regarded a species as opposed
to a lower taxon. This doesn't really make sense to me as I don't see a
difference in protecting a population of a species or that of a (distinct)
lower taxon (e.g. Indian versus Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross).
Anyway, the topic is very academic as you may see in the above reference and in
some of the responses to this thread.
On the other side, I don't really understand all the hype about lumping and
splitting in the non-academic birding community (listers, twitchers, birdos,
name it...). Why don't birders enjoy and document identifiable taxa? (some of
us do - I know) Having "ticked" Crimson Finch clearly doesn't mean that you
have seen evangelinae - a bird quite different from an "ordinary" Crimson
Finch! And there are hundreds of similar examples. I believe that ringnecks,
the blue-cheeked rosella group, the spotted pardalote group, shrike-tits etc.
were mentioned earlier.
There was an overseas visitor on a pelagic (a year or so ago), who told me that
he wasn't interested in Indian YN Albatross, because he had seen "it"
previously. It turned out that he had only seen Atlantic YNA before. He uses
Clements for his world tick list, which doesn't accept the YNA split. When I
told him that Clements had accepted the Shy split into 3 species [cauta
(including subspecies steadi), salvini and eremita], he was suddenly interested
in seeing a Shy (he had only seen Salvin's before), otherwise he would have
ignored it (as he did with the Indian YNA).
Does this make sense?
If you are interested in a bird rather than a checkmark or number on a
spreadsheet, then you should have an actual look at the bird - regardless of
its taxonomic status.
Cheers,
Nikolas
----------------
Nikolas Haass
Sydney, NSW
________________________________
From: Laurie Knight <>
To: Robert Inglis <>
Cc: Birding-Aus <>
Sent: Sunday, January 6, 2013 9:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Splits, lumps, taxonomies, check-lists, whatever.
A "species" is something you "tick"
:)
LK
On 03/01/2013, at 7:42 PM, Robert Inglis wrote:
> From all this passionate discussion on taxonomies I am assuming that someone
> (or some committee) has finally come up with a viable, scientifically based
> and universally accepted definition of “a species”.
>
> Would someone be so kind as to tell me what that definition is.
>
> Bob Inglis
> Sandstone Point
> Qld
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