On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:
> I don't think the check-list committee is uptight about people knowing
> about these splits, David. What Van Remsen (committee member) told me is
> that the committee reserves the right to change its collective mind, and
> just because they met and decided something, doesn't mean that *that*
> decision will for sure be the one published in the new check-list or
> supplement. I guess that's why Official Publication is considered somewhat
> sacrosanct as a final word, so the Official Rumors don't outpace it and get
> mud in their eyes accordingly.

Hmm, the rumors I heard (...) were to the effect that the upcoming
checklist will have a mid-1995 cover date, but will not appear until
mid-1996 because the Auk is a year behind in publication. That is, that
the 1995 deliberations are made, but they won't appear officially until
1996. If the committee may be making changes to a document that has a
mid-1995 cover date (i.e., that is supposed to have been *in press* for
a year), that also seems silly, but it is their perogative.

> In terms of services provided and consequences of their delay, I suppose
> the only "service" is to provide ornithologists/birders with the latest
> word on the "official" viewpoint about the taxonomy and systematics of
> North American birds. Obviously many of the changes chronicled will be
> known about anyway in these communities, and there's not really a whole lot
> of people whose lives will be any different accordingly. It's ongoing
> bookkeeping. Right now I suspect far and away the most interest in these
> deliberations is among birders. Am I being too cynical if I suspect the
> "ground rules for listers" you mention above as the motivation for much of
> this interest?

Not at all. I suspect my cynicism may even outreach yours, Dennis, because
the only reason I can see to *have* such a committee is to establish ground
rules for listers. I suppose it could be argued that not all ornithologists
keep up with matters in systematics and taxonomy, and that some guidance or
"standardization" may be desirable; the end result in this case is not that
different from the service provided to the listers ("just tell us what to
call these things"). So be it, but I have the feeling that these
deliberations are regarded by many as the final word on the status of the
populations in question.

Whether a given population is a "species," a "subspecies," or whatever is
a *hypothesis*, and these hypotheses are colored by the species concepts
in which they are framed. If there are multiple viable hypotheses regarding
the status of a given population, the resulting nomenclatural discord
is the most accurate reflection of our knowledge regarding that
population. If a committee chooses one of these hypotheses as the
"official" one, it effectively suppresses the alternatives.

A practical question regarding this matter: does the AOU "enforce" the
decisions of the checklist committee by requiring authors publishing in
the Auk to use the nomenclature decided on by the committee? If so,
doesn't this prevent some authors from accurately expressing their own
hypotheses, or from acting on their own decisions about which species-taxa
hypotheses are best supported by evidence? If not, doesn't this kind of
defeat the purpose of having a checklist? A little diversity in
nomenclature is intellectually healthy and honest (though it might keep
listers up at night).

David Wright
dwright at u.washington.edu