On Feb 20, 2009, at 11:05 PM, Eugene and Nancy Hunn wrote:

1) The Willet is now sandwiched between Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, and
2) The Western Gull is torn from his familiar moorings beside the
Glaucous-winged and stuck between Ring-billed and California.

============


This rings of other recent events in which important questions were
not asked before jumping blindly into systemic changes; of throwing
out the tried-and-true, conventional and "old-fashioned" ways.

These new DNA induced classification changes beg to call into question
the system used to make the new associations before their use becomes
the standard, and before disturbing the more obvious and traditional
associations of these birds. I know little about DNA sequencing, but
it seems like the new tenets may be wrong.

I second Gene's question when he asks how Western Gull that breed so
freely with Glaucous Gulls could be more closely related to those that
they rarely hybridize with.




Scott R a y
Yakima, WA
mryakima at gmail dot com

>
>
> On another issue, I've been meaning to post a question about the recent rearrangements of the sequence of shorebirds and gulls in the latest Washington State checklist. At first I thought it was an editorial oversight but apparently not:
>
> 1) The Willet is now sandwiched between Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, and
> 2) The Western Gull is torn from his familiar moorings beside the Glaucous-winged and stuck between Ring-billed and California.
>
> I've tried to imagine an evolutionary scenario that would make sense of this but find it a stretch. Does anyone know the rationale behind these moves? No doubt some weird DNA thing, but how could Western Gulls not be closest kin to Glaucous-winged, given that they so freely hybridize?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>