Mysticete
Well-known member
Of interest, the Costa Rica guide and the Belize guide are now available for purchase, at least here in the states. Of interest to the forum, the Belize book on amazon has a preview with chunks of the book available to read, including as luck would have it the entire taxonomic note section, where they outline why they split/lump what they do, using IOC as the baseline (and not AOS I should note). No idea if this works outside the US, but you can access the preview here. A lot of this is the material from that table I initially posted out, with the evidence and ranges more clearly outlined.
Some of this is already out of date, since some of their proposed changes such as splitting Tropical Pewee or lumping Osprey have already been done. It's a bit of work going through the notes since some of the notes are for POTENTIAL splits not recognized, and some are for splits/lumps they do follow through with. You could probably cross-reference easily enough with the index which is also included in the preview. Of interest they recognize American Great Egret and Atlantic Booby at the species level, as two obvious examples I noticed. Bunch of others, although also some lumps (only one Whimbrel and Barn Owl for instance)
Edit: I just noticed that not all of the novel taxonomic changes are referenced in the taxonomic notes. It seems like the seabirds aren't covered, since they were covered in Howell's recent seabird field guide. So the note section won't mention the Bridled Tern, Brown Booby, etc splits. Also the taxonomic notes are largely focused on Belize residents....largely North American taxa that are strays or pass through are not discussed in this section but apparently in the main text. Just a word of caution there
Some of this is already out of date, since some of their proposed changes such as splitting Tropical Pewee or lumping Osprey have already been done. It's a bit of work going through the notes since some of the notes are for POTENTIAL splits not recognized, and some are for splits/lumps they do follow through with. You could probably cross-reference easily enough with the index which is also included in the preview. Of interest they recognize American Great Egret and Atlantic Booby at the species level, as two obvious examples I noticed. Bunch of others, although also some lumps (only one Whimbrel and Barn Owl for instance)
Edit: I just noticed that not all of the novel taxonomic changes are referenced in the taxonomic notes. It seems like the seabirds aren't covered, since they were covered in Howell's recent seabird field guide. So the note section won't mention the Bridled Tern, Brown Booby, etc splits. Also the taxonomic notes are largely focused on Belize residents....largely North American taxa that are strays or pass through are not discussed in this section but apparently in the main text. Just a word of caution there
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