Recently I looked at whether anyone had claimed a basis for splitting Australian and New Zealand Silver Gulls. The only thing I came across was the following. It is from Given, A.D., Mills, J.A., Baker, A.J., 2005. Molecular evidence for recent radiation in southern hemisphere masked gulls. The Auk 122, 268–279:
“Recently diverged taxon pairs, such as L. hartlaubii-L. cirrocephalus and L. n. novaehollandiae-L. n. scopulinus, have evolved distinctive morphological differences despite occasional hybridization events. The latter pair are isolated in Australia and New Zealand, respectively, but the two forms differ in size (especially in tarsus length) and in wing-feather markings. However, because they otherwise look so similar and in the breeding season have striking red color to their external soft parts, they are treated merely as subspecies of L. novaehollandiae. Given that they clearly have independent evolutionary histories and thus qualify as phylogenetic species, we recommend formally raising each to full species status as L. novaehollandiae (Silver Gull of Australia and New Caledonia) and L. scopulinus (Red-billed Gull of New Zealand).”
Of course this isn’t terribly helpful if you are considering whether they deserve to be split under the biological species concept. It merely states they deserve to be split because they have separate evolutionary histories – which is how the phylogenetic species concept works.
I can’t help but think that if we split these two on the basis of one wing feather and a slightly different bill shape, we ought to split several hundred other species.
Murray Lord Sydney
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G’day Murray, Thanks. I haven’t seen that paper… but wow, *a different genetic history* is a stunningly lame argument for splitting. My parents and I have the same genetic history, though mine is a step longer. My wife and I have a genetic history that diverged many thousands of years ago, but I like to image that we are the same species. Since her eyes are brown and mine are blue, perhaps the modern molecular taxonomist could not find parsimonious support for this tenuous hypothesis? How does this sort of rubbish even get published?
David James, Sydney burunglaut07@yahoo.com ==============================
Sent: Tuesday, 5 July 2011 10:42 AM
Recently I looked at whether anyone had claimed a basis for splitting Australian and New Zealand Silver Gulls. The only thing I came across was the following. It is from Given, A.D., Mills, J.A., Baker, A.J., 2005. Molecular evidence for recent radiation in southern hemisphere masked gulls. The Auk 122, 268–279:
“Recently diverged taxon pairs, such as L. hartlaubii-L. cirrocephalus and L. n. novaehollandiae-L. n. scopulinus, have evolved distinctive morphological differences despite occasional hybridization events. The latter pair are isolated in Australia and New Zealand, respectively, but the two forms differ in size (especially in tarsus length) and in wing-feather markings. However, because they otherwise look so similar and in the breeding season have striking red color to their external soft parts, they are treated merely as subspecies of L. novaehollandiae. Given that they clearly have independent evolutionary histories and thus qualify as phylogenetic species, we recommend formally raising each to full species status as L. novaehollandiae (Silver Gull of Australia and New Caledonia) and L. scopulinus (Red-billed Gull of New Zealand).”
Of course this isn’t terribly helpful if you are considering whether they deserve to be split under the biological species concept. It merely states they deserve to be split because they have separate evolutionary histories – which is how the phylogenetic species concept works.
I can’t help but think that if we split these two on the basis of one wing feather and a slightly different bill shape, we ought to split several hundred other species.
Murray Lord Sydney
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org =============================== ===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================