Hi everyone,
This is all very confusing. What constitutes an accepted split? Where does the Myall subspecies of the Thick-belled Grasswren fall? Western or what? And what of the the C&B list? What do we take as the official list? The world list or C&B? These days I always try to tick every sub-species just in case it ends up being split later on. It seems splitting very much back in fashion but it seems impossible to keep abreast of all the developments. Surely there could be a committee set up by Birds Australia to review the official Australian list on an annual basis that takes into account all the latest developments? I have always lived and died by C&B but recently that seems to no longer be the case.In the meantime I will try not to drown in the data.
Cheers
David Kowalick ===============================
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G’day Philip,
“Allow me to express what I hope is obvious”, you haven’t quite explained yourself here Philip or I suspect you don’t really understand the reasons for a committee as outlined by David. Evolution has got absolutely nothing to do with this, David wasn’t suggesting a committee that would change the Australian list to keep pace with the evolution of new species as they evolve!!! What would be your process that would deliver on “Suggesting a consistent list would be helpful”, it’s our evolving understanding of how many species there are through published research that is driving this issue and leading to an ongoing need to reassess the list. I am all for David’s suggestion, it’s way overdue.
Cheers Jeff.
Yes, very confusing – especially as there is more than one world list to choose from! I keep my world list by the IOU/IOC checklist and my Aus one by C&B, but it gets increasingly difficult. I tend to agree with you – I think BA/BOCA (or the new hopefully merged organisation when/if it happens) should agree to adopt one of the world taxonomies and then we just run with that. BARC (or a variation of it) could decide which of these birds should be on the Aus list (and hopefully we could feed back to the organisation that produced the list the preferred Aus names for the endemics on the list, so we do not have “Swan River Honeyeater) but there would seem to me at least no role for an Australian taxonomic list that differs from a generally accepted world list. That is NOT to say of course that there should be no research done locally – but it should be left to an international body to review such research and decide whether or not to accept the research – as clearly is already being done for a number of species.
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