Interesting splits there, whitei is probably not that surprising, not sure
about rowleyi, although it is a bit of an isolate, so again a possibility. The
one I question is oweni from central Aust. Schodde & Mason didn't even consider
this one as a subspecies! I had a look at the grasswrens for HANZAB, &
certainly the central ones look very distinctive, very rufous & bright compared
to mallee striatus. They had the opinion that there was a cline between
striatus & oweni, which gradated into something more rufous in central
Australia. The main problem here is that most of the habitat between the 2 has
been wiped out, as well as the possible clines between the 2. I kind of thought
they warranted subspecific status to mark the differences between the 2,
especially since the cline is now broken. The other complication is the remark
that striatus is found in the south-east Murray-Mallee region. I've looked at
photos of grasswrens from Gluepot & compared them to the grasswrens at Ha
ttah, south of the Murray & the Gluepot birds are a little more rufous than
the Hattah birds. This could well be evidence of a cline. I haven't looked at
the paper, but I hope that these problems have been taken into account. Perhaps
the birds north of the Murray are actually oweni!?-Kevin Bartram
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
