Hi all-

I think the more interesting part of this article is the cryptic
species. These are birds that generally look very similar but have a
substantial amount of genetic difference among several forms. A lot
of these actually aren't that surprising. Eastern and Western forms
of Winter Wren are well documented, same for Bewick's, Raven
(California and otherwise), Meadowlark, and Mexican and Scrub Jays.
The intriguing ones to me are Solitary Sandpiper, Mountain Chickadee,
and Bushtit, unless they're talking about the one with the mask.
These splits are probably bigger in terms of difference than a lot of
other species-pairs out there. It's probably worthwhile to treat
them as separate for conservation and scientific purposes.

That said... The potential twins list is rather uninteresting.
These are just closely related species pairs that we've known about
for a while. Their "barcode" is only a small fraction of the genome
for each of these species, and perhaps isn't capturing all the
difference. They're just young pairs of sister species - the teal
probably diverged very recently. That doesn't mean they're not
separate. As someone pointed out, behavioral differences certainly
trump the genetic ones - if Clark's and Western RARELY interbreed
despite often occurring on the same lakes, then they certainly are
different. And does anyone think King and Common Eider should be
lumped? As a scientist I can't wait until it's easy to get a full
genome for any species... THEN we'll really know about some of these
relationships.

My opinion? This is more hype than not. It MAY support splits for a
few species, but I don't think it remotely supports lumping.

Good birding,
Jesse Ellis
Ithaca, NY

>02/18/07
>
>As for me, it's not hard to accept splits for Western Screech Owl
>(Mohave form?), Curved-billed Thrasher and Eastern Meadowlark
>(Lillian's form?).
>
>Phil Hotlen
>Bellingham, WA
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--
Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. candidate
Neurobiology and Behavior
jme29 at cornell.edu
111 Mudd Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, 14853