HI friends,
I have been getting more and more suspicious that the lumping of Masked Plover Vanellus miles and Spur-winged Plover Vanellus novaehollandiae is unjustified. Even Peters (1934), that super-lumper kept them separate. They were merged on the basis of supposed interbreeding around Cairns and in the Lake Eyre Basin. Now the thinking about the significance of hybridisation has changed radically of late. Whereas in the past, even a few hybirds were taken as evidence of conspecificity, now limited or very local hybridisation is taken as evdidence that we are dealing with two distinct species. I had an email from a birder in Cairns who told me that the common Vanellus there was miles. Novaehollandiae is rare, as are hybrids. I haven’t been able to get any reliable data from the Lake Eyre Basin. Birders rarely go there and none of the landholders knows anything about birds. But given the situation around Cairns, I would be very surprised if it was very different around Lake Eyre. I know that an ornithologist from the SA Museum, I think it was Shane Parker, brought back a set of hybrids from that reason, but if he set out to collect just hybrids, this means nothing.
What do you thinK?
Thanks
Dr John Penhallurick
86 Bingley Cres
Fraser A.C.T. 2615
Australia
email:jpenhall@bigpond.net.au
Phone: Home (612) 62585428
Mobile:0408585426
sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt Aeneid Book 1,line 462 “The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.”
Magna est veritas et praevalebit Vulgate, Book of Edras
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