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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Recent content by thomasdonegan

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    AOU-NACC Proposals 2024

    How about McCown's Wren? [joke].
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    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...
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    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
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    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...
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    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
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    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...
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    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...
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