David Wright wrote:

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).


Being an Olde Worlde European, I much prefer using common names for
birds and then standardizing on Latin names for the science and
communication thing. That we everybody understands what species you
are talking about, regardless of nationality, after all that's why
we have scientific names. Having one "standard" name, ie the English
language version, smacks a bit of cultural imperialism and is a bit
reminiscent of the way the former Eastern Bloc countries did
business :-)

Perhaps I should start a new hobby - combining biotechnology and
ornithology to create "bio-nithology" where you run around the
country getting blood samples from birds and listing the different
DNA sequences !!!!

BTW: This is not another attempt at being politically-correct (a
hideous "marxist" concept) . I'd rather used old Norse and banding
dialect names for birds than some pre-approved standard.

Stuart - celebrating diversity !!!!

PS And besides - who has a watertight concept of what a species is
anyway ???????