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  1. T

    AOU-NACC Proposals 2024

    How about McCown's Wren? [joke].
  2. T

    Latest IOC Diary Updates

    A noteworthy elimination of 4 English name patronyms, all of which honour European or US persons for Indo-Chinese birds (the great French ornithologist Verreaux should need no introduction; from google of the others, looks like another French scientist, a US geologist and a Hungarian nobleman)...
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    Latest IOC Diary Updates

    For example, SACC seem to be on the cusp of rejecting the split of Splendid Woodpecker, based on their favourite criterion, 'not enough data'. Most committee member comments imply that this determination was based on a cursory inspection of sonograms done in their spare time or vague allegations...
  4. T

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I think you should publish on these proposals. Sounds very sensible to me. We have too many families in birds, compared to other groups such as Insects. Passerine families in particular seem to be converging to a 1980s concept of genus-level diversification. There is an inclination on the part...
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    Antpitta

    😴 The ProAves press release of 15 February clearly mentions the 2015 record. See below. https://proaves.org/en/astounding-new-species-of-bird-for-science-discovered-in-the-sierra-nevada-de-santa-marta-colombia/ I quote from the ProAves release: "Approximately 10,000 ornithologists and...
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    AOS NACC/SACC taxonomic committee governance and structures (no discussions on patronyms)

    The South American Classification Committee was founded in 1998. ... This classification is subject to constant revision by the proposal system established in 2000 First ever SACC Proposal 1 is dated 4 October 2000. It's not clear where 1998 comes from...
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    AOS NACC/SACC taxonomic committee governance and structures (no discussions on patronyms)

    I think someone may be trying to pull the wool over your eyes. The AOS was created by merging the AOU and the Cooper Society a few years ago. The AOU was actually the the surviving entity in the merger, so the AOS is just the AOU with its name and constitution changed. As far as I am aware, SACC...
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    AOS NACC/SACC taxonomic committee governance and structures (no discussions on patronyms)

    Thank goodness for the edit function
  9. T

    AOS NACC/SACC taxonomic committee governance and structures (no discussions on patronyms)

    This was quite an interesting and thought provoking post, and kind of encapsulates everything. The last sentence seems everyone's view (and mine too). Nice process at SACC, shame about so many of the taxonomic decisions. It would make excellent sense for SACC to join up with S American...
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    AOS NACC/SACC taxonomic committee governance and structures (no discussions on patronyms)

    When the rock band Oasis split up, Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher started touring separately. The guitarist and drummer (Gem Archer and Chris Sharrock) kept playing and touring with both of the resulting two bands. Following the patronym-related announcements, something similar seems to be...
  11. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    I guess it would be hard for Normand David to send such a letter; I had understood that he passed away recently: https://www.urgelbourgie.com/en/funeral-announcements/70624-normand-david
  12. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    Well spotted! (SACC are, true to form and at the same time, doing a truly awful job right now in reaching to not accept the (good) split of Campephilus splendens - which most other checklists accept, based on clear differences in number of notes in drumming. Drumming differences are regarded...
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    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    Note changes to AOS committees https://americanornithology.org/about/committees/ And as it stood a few days ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20231101104112/https://americanornithology.org/about/committees/ The LSU website that hosts SACC remains unchanged it seems. Maybe they did not get...
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    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    Howard & Moore adopted at least three "original spellings" of Linnaeus in their contracted forms. In this paper, two of those were reversed by ICZN...
  15. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    http://digest.sialia.com/?rm=message;id=1826614 I thought this was quite funny from one of the resigning committee members re English names: "We and other ornithological groups can cite any set of any standardized English names we want when we produce our own official lists, and this could be...
  16. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    http://digest.sialia.com/?rm=message;id=1826614
  17. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    ?? This paper touches a bit on bird names in this context: Neotropical ornithology: Reckoning with historical assumptions, removing systemic barriers, and reimagining the future https://academic.oup.com/condor/article/125/1/duac046/7026133?login=false I speak only for myself. I speak also for...
  18. T

    AOS to discard patronyms in English names

    On patronyms and NACC I would like to generally support what NACC are doing in getting rid of patronyms; I would prefer a more careful reduction programme, but aiming high might achieve something more akin to that. There may be a woke-ism agenda around that sparked some of this, with McCown...
  19. T

    What is a species?

    Hello Jon. Please see this attempt at an objective, stats-based system for species. Donegan TM 2018. What is a species? A new universal method to measuredifferentiation and assess the taxonomic rank ofallopatric populations, using continuous variables. Zookeys. PDF Note that for sympatrics...
  20. T

    Undescribed

    BTW is there an update on Daniel Philippe's "Undescribed" list which kicked this off? I always found that interesting.
  21. T

    Undescribed

    If you google "taxonomic impediment" there are lots of papers which kind of explain why we don't see much research effort focused on descriptions and taxonomic revisions. These include: Lack of funding for institutions that traditionally do this sort of thing, e.g. natural history museums...
  22. T

    AOU-NACC Proposals 2023

    I think you should take it into account. But we should not get too hung up about whether a split or lump is "accepted" by someone. There is currently a political backdrop that AOS do not like the BirdLife checklist initiative, which (a) contradicts their taxonomies (how dare they!) and (b) is...
  23. T

    AOU-NACC Proposals 2023

    Hello Peter. I wrote lots of proposals to SACC and some to NACC about 10-20 years ago. I concluded it was a total waste of time. You seem to have come to the same conclusion, but I believe I could have or did tell you so. The point of these committees seems not to be to develop more rational...
  24. T

    Renaming taxa on ethical grounds

    I don't know, I just sometimes feel like obsessing over English language names of birds that occur in non-English speaking countries (which is something I have spent a small part of my life doing) is a bit of an odd activity. It creates a lexicon that non-first-English speaking local guides are...
  25. T

    Renaming taxa on ethical grounds

    Hmmmm. Not always - binomial nomenclature was invented in 1758. Many English names nowadays take their root in the works of Willughby (1676, 1678) who first wrote them down, almost a century before Linnaeus thought to use Latin names. Nowadays, as a person with an interest in S America, I...
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