Maybe. to quote from “The Castle”: Tell them they’re dreaming.
Ultimately I think it is not possible, as species evolve into other species or split. We are just at a point in time. This predicts that there will be transitions right now.
Philip
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14 comments to Splits, lumps, taxonomies, check-lists, whatever. |
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All taxonomies get updated or become irrelevant so any system that uses a taxonomy must have a process that allows for change. From my personal experience it is easier to cope with frequent small changes than occasional really big ones!
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Surely Australia isn’t the only country that has projects such as the Atlas. How do other countries that use the IOC taxonomy cope with the regular updates?
Cheers, Koren
G’day John et al.
Either of the two life list spreadsheets here have what you want:
http://www.worldbirdnames.org/ioc-lists/master-list/
Cheers Steve
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Good comments Frank.
I think a key is that all databases etc should be recording subspecies – and many unfortunately don’t. If subspecies are recorded then splits can be handled very easily – if not then it is sometimes possible to process a split based on location (eg Shrike-tit) but often impossible. Lumps of course (which seem much rarer these days!) of course present no real issues for recording birds – except that hopefully the system that is used records the new subspecies that is created by the lump, which will help if/when a split occurs!
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“Thank you” to everyone who responded to my query, even to those whose responses I didn’t really understand.
It is interesting that the concept of species as a base element of taxonomy is widely accepted but when a definition of “species” is asked for the response is usually that it cannot be defined. I beg to differ. A simple and acceptable (to me at least) definition of “species” could be “a group subordinate to a genus and containing individuals agreeing in some common attributes and called by a common name”. Thus “a species” can be defined as a member of such a group. Unfortunately, that explains in logical terms what a species is but it doesn’t explain in biological terms how any of those ‘individuals’ were assessed to be eligible for inclusion as a ‘species’ belonging in one particular or, indeed, in any genus.
In retrospect and after considering the above definition I realise I asked the wrong question. What my question should have been is “Is there a viable, scientifically based and universally accepted process (or set of criteria) by which individual creatures are assessed for the purpose of including them as a ‘species’ in a particular genus?”. The fact that there are several taxonomies being used for the birds of Australia makes it obvious that there is no such universally accepted process or criteria set. It also seems apparent to me that none of the touted taxonomies is entirely science based but all depend to some degree on subjective assessments. It also seems to me that some birdwatchers are dissatisfied with all of the extant taxonomies and are prepared to devise their own modified versions of those taxonomies based on their own concepts.
Now, before anyone becomes overly excited and starts to think I am being hypercritical of anyone or any taxonomy, I think I should clarify (or at least try to clarify) a few things about my question and why I asked it.
I must point out that I readily, happily and enthusiastically accept the concept of “species” and all of the other stages of taxonomy so I am not wishing to critisise anyone who is involved in examining the species/sub-species status of particular birds. I believe in the “origin of species by means of natural selection” and thus the evolution of ‘new’ species as ‘splits’ from ‘old’ species. In the field of ornithology I am strictly a lay-person observing from the sideline; I certainly have no qualifications in taxonomy and am quite happy to accept what the ‘experts’ determine to be the true situation regarding the status of a particular species or sub-species. However, in Australia at the moment, there appears to be at least three ‘expertly devised’ taxonomies for the birds of Australia in use. More precisely, there is one taxonomy exclusively dedicated to the birds of Australia and another two ‘world’ taxonomies which include the birds of Australia. There also appears to be some not so expertly devised variations of those three taxonomies devised by individual birdwatchers to suit there own needs.
To be quite frank, I don’t really care which taxonomy is considered to be the ‘best’ but at the moment I am happy to stick with C&B 2008 as this is the one which is used (with some licence) in the most recent editions of the most popular Australian bird field guides. It also appears to be the taxonomy which Birdlife Australia requires for its Atlas project and also appears to be the taxonomy required for contributions to Birdlife Photography. However, no taxonomy stands still and nor should it, so no doubt there will come a time when Birdlife Australia converts to another taxonomy as will future editions of the Australian bird field guides and when that time comes I also will convert even though I am not a member of Birdlife Australia (or any other ‘birdwatching’ club/association/group/collective for that matter) and it would likely mean some extra work to ‘adjust’ my website. (Sorry about that very long sentence.) I would, of course, hope that such a conversion would be done according to good scientific reasons and not just to obtain a ‘checklist’ which makes more ‘ticks’ available. I also accept that any new taxonomy accepted by Birdlife Australia will not be a new C&B.
I could go on for ever on this but I probably would only get myself into severely turbulent air.
Of the responses so far……..
Helen Larson’s response was very incitant (my word for the day) and also contained a great deal of insight. Thank you Helen. Unfortunately your last statement does seem to be a commonly held attitude towards what a ‘species’ is.
The detailed contribution from Nikolas Haass sums up pretty much my attitude. To choose to follow a particular taxonomy simply because that one gives a desired outcome, e.g., a certain list, doesn’t appeal to me. However, I certainly don’t deny the right of any other birdwatcher to have a different approach to birdwatching and taxonomy to the one I have.
My principle (but not obsessive) birding interest is in photographing birds and I do like to put species names (common and scientific) to those birds but, unfortunately, it is becoming difficult to be sure that the names I am using are ones that other birdwatchers are also using. It would be so much easier if we were all “singing from the same songbook”.
Bob Inglis Sandstone Point Qld
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Totally agree Niklass!
I used to see Crimson Rosellas (elegans) everyday when I lived in Sydney (Hornsby) but seeing the flaveolus (yellow) or nigrescens (FNQ) subspecies for the first time was a real buzz.
Neither were “tickable” but both awesome birds to see.
Just got to get to Adelaide now… 😉
Birding should definitely be more than just ticking! (But each to their own…)
Cheers,
Ed
Ed Williams Kingsville, VIC
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Bruce
I guess it comes down to what you mean by an “official” list – as you say the Aus birding community seems to use 3 different lists at the moment – those who stick with C&B, those who use IOC (which is my preference for the reasons you state – and note it is also used by BARC so if you find any rarities you will need to use IOC!) and those who use Clements. Whilst I guess eventually those in the first group will migrate to one of the other two, it seems likely that there will always be a difference between the IOC camp and the Clements camp.
So what is an “official” list anyway? Is it used by a Government department – and if so is there agreement amongst all levels of government? Or is it promulgated by a birding organisation – we have one large organisation (BirdLife – and of course BirdLife International have their own list as well so that could well come into the equation!) but quite a lot of medium sized ones who may well have their own equally valid views on what is to be used.
On 6 January 2013 10:31, Wedderburn Birdingwrote:
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1474-919X.2002.00091.x/pdf is the document. SOme good points Nikolaas – in my “early” days I guess I just “ticked” the species – now I am much more interested in the subspecies – although identification at that level is not always easy and not all field guides even go to that level of detail
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I’m glad it was you, Laurie, who said that and not me.
To all of those people who have responded to my question and to those others who may be interested but who have wisely chosen to be silent I can say I will follow up my original posting. However, I am spending time reading those responses and trying hard to create a form of words which is as uncontroversial as possible. Could be difficult. Also, the tennis on the TV is playing havoc with my daily routine. Which could mean that I, poor misguided soul, may subconsciously believe that there are more important things in life than understanding how creatures become ‘species’.
A clue to what will be in my next posting on this topic is that I think I asked the wrong question. It is so hard to ask the right question when one doesn’t really have a clue about the subject. What was that saying ……….”as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know”……………needs a bit of work, I think. (Incidentally, my spell checker didn’t know “knowns” but it did know “unknowns”.)
Bob Inglis Sandstone Point Qld http://www.photos-n-guides.com/
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
A “species” is something you “tick”
LK
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No Bob, there is no nice tidy definition that all of us taxonomists agree on (I’m a fish taxonomist). Doubt there ever will be, given the wide range of people working in systematics. My palaeontology friends keep pointing out that what we see today are micro-snapshots in time, and that species are always changing, some fast and some very slowly. I wish I had a TARDIS so I could go back in time and check out some of these tiny confusing little gobies and see who’s mating with who and who their direct ancestors were. DNA analyses have muddied the picture in the sense that sometimes, broad statements of kinship or species-groups are made on the basis of one or a few genes, when there was a long-standing group defined by 10-20 morphological characters. Arguments then abound. On a species-level, DNA can help show that one population really is different – and with luck, when you re-examine the specimens, you may find a feature that corroborates this. We are at the very beginning of learning which bits of genetic material work best – i.e. most helpfully. And how to run analyses so that they don’t come out how you want them to, or the results change very time a new species is added into the kinship tree. But no matter how objective one tries to be, the desire to put things in tidy pigeonholes is back there, knocking at the base of your brain. Birdos are lucky in that there is a huge group of people all watching and studying birds at varying levels, so there is lots of information available. Pity us poor ichthyologists, who can’t breathe water and whose favourite animals live in water, so we can only watch them for limited amounts of time. I’m not a geneticist, but a traditional morphological taxonomist – looking at the whole animal, its ecology and behaviour. So a species is whatever you think it is……! Helen
< ')/////==< ________________________________ Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2013, 19:42 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 =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) http://birding-aus.org =============================== ===============================
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Well of course that depends on your species concept. You have included both phylogenetic (PSC) and biological (BSC) in your post.
May I suggest you consider CSU’s Grad Cert in Ornithology. This is one of the subjects we studied.
BSC states that species a species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups. Species are thus regarded as more or less close genetic systems, such that, if hybridisation occurs, it is limited in some way, and does not result in a fusion of two separate gene pools.
The main alternative to the BSC is the PSC in which species are defined as recognisable images: a species is the smallest diagnosable cluster of individual organisms within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent. Any criterion – whether morphological behavioural or genetic – can be used to identify individuals is belonging to the same diagnose be different lineage provided that the criteria I genetically controlled, and results from evolution. Where is BSC is defined primarily by lack of interbreeding for PSC this is merely one of several possible criteria, allowing for the possibility that interbreeding maybe retained or transient trait.
Regards Alastair
Hi Dave:
I get your point. As a layman, I always assumed a species was defined by appearance (visual and physical traits) and the fact that one species wouldn’t usually hybridize with others in the same genus or family. If populations of a species were separated by range or barriers, then appearance, behaviour, calls and songs would determine if each was a separate species in its own right or just a sub-species. Then DNA analysis came along……..
Cheers,
John
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Indeed – after all if a species always bred “true” – ie the offspring were exactly the same species as their parents – we would never get any evolution going on. So all children will be very slightly different from their parents and over time this may or may not lead to new “species” evolving – but the precise moment when this happens would be just about impossible to pin point!
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