02/19/07

Hi Jesse & Tweets,

I like your assessment of the "15 species" phenmenon. I recently had my mtDNA fully sequenced. The early HVR1 & HVR2 tests looked more like haplogroup H than my U5. But the full spectrum test revealed fundamental differences.

Phil Hotlen
Bellingham, WA
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Jesse Ellis <jme29 at cornell.edu>
> 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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> >Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> >http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
>
> --
> Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. candidate
> Neurobiology and Behavior
> jme29 at cornell.edu
> 111 Mudd Hall
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, 14853
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