Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!mephisto!prism!sun13!sandee
From: sandee@sun13.scri.fsu.edu (Daan Sandee)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: MacGillivray's Warbler variant song query
Message-ID: <151@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 26 Jun 90 14:33:48 GMT
References: <95660@kean.ucs.mun.ca> <1990Jun20.200626.9889@cbnewsm.att.com> <29148@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <306@spam.ua.oz>
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University
Lines: 33

In article <306@spam.ua.oz> wvenable@spam.ua.oz (Bill Venables) writes:
>First a word of explanation.  For some reason this news group now
>comes to Australia.  I'm not sure if North American readers will be
>all that interested in notes on Australian birds, but I guess they
>will let me know in the customary way!

Sure we're interested for any news from the (both ornithologically and other-
wise) fascinating Fifth Continent.

[ story about wedgebills being distinguishable by voice only ]

>More recently the two have been re-classified and are now regarded as
>conspecific, although such are the vagaries of academic pigeon-holing
>I can't say for how long. :-)
>Regards,	Bill Venables.

Interesting. The A.O.U. (that's American, not Australian) treats two
populations as distinct species if they, under normal circumstances,
do not significantly interbreed. Whether they are sympatric or allopatric
is not really an issue, although it makes the determination of the degree of
interbreeding much easier if they are allopatric. From your description,
it sounds as if the wedgebills should be regarded as two species.
In the U.S., the only recent case of a voice-based split is the Traill's
Flycatcher, which was split into Alder and Willow Flycatcher. The two
species have a largely similar distribution, but within that area prefer
different habitats. They can (apart from choice of habitat) be distinguished
by song only - well, sort of ; actually, the songs aren't all that different.
I can think of no example in American ornithology where two species that
were distinguishable by voice only, have been lumped.

Daan Sandee                                           sandee@sun16.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052  (904) 644-7045