Subject: NW Crow status
Date: Apr 29 10:29:30 2003
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


I queried some members of the AOU Check-list Committee about the
status of the Northwestern Crow, Corvus caurinus, and why it still
was maintained by that committee as a full species. Here are two
responses:
----------------------
Dennis -- as an AOUCLC member, I regard Corvus caurinus as by far the
most dubious species-level taxon on our list. My recollection is
that about a dozen years or so ago, we tried to use Johnston's
monograph as a means of dumping C. caurinus but found so many
problems with that analysis that we decided not to do it. Perhaps
Dick Banks or Ned Johnson recalls the situation more clearly.

Regardless, we resurrected the issue on the CLC during the Seattle
AOU meeting, after informal discussions with Sievert and others
there, and one of us was designated to restudy Johnston 1961 to see
if we could use it as a basis for "dumping" caurinus. So, stay
tuned. The basic problem is that although everyone "knows" that
caurinus is bogus, published data are few.
--
Van Remsen
----------------------
Dennis,

I too am on the AOU CLC, and agree with Van's response. I was the one
who was assigned this problem at the Seattle meeting. The reason I
haven't done a formal proposal to the committee is that someone at
the Burke (a postdoc, I believe) was doing molecular work on this
problem in collaboration with Sievert. We had some correspondence
about this in Sept. 2001, at which time she expected to have the data
analyzed that fall. I was waiting to see those published data...since
corvids are my responsibility, I will follow through on the status of
that study.

Best,
Carla [Cicero]
--
Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
1500 N. Warner, #1088
Tacoma, WA 98416-1088
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html