HI:
Anybody heading to Idaho will want to take note!

--

Ian Paulsen
Bainbridge Island, WA, USA
" Which just goes to show that a
passion for books is extremely unhealthy."
from Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart".

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 14:30:07 -0800
From: Ted Floyd <tedfloyd57 at HOTMAIL.COM>
To: BIRDWG01 at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: [BIRDWG01] New species of Red Crossbill from North America

Hello, Birders.

The February 2009 issue of The Condor (vol. 111, no. 1) has just come out, and many of us will be interested in an article by Craig Benkman and colleagues that describes a new crossbill: Loxia sinesciuris, the SOUTH HILLS CROSSBILL. The species is endemic to Idaho.

The full text of the article is available as a PDF download: http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1525/cond.2009.080042

Here is the abstract of the paper:

------------------------------------

A new Species of the Red Crossbill (Fringillidae: Loxia) from Idaho, by Craig W. Benkman, Julie W. Smith, Patrick C. Keenan, Thomas L. Parchman, and Leonard Santisteban, pp. 169?176.

The Red Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra complex) endemic to the South Hills and Albion Mountains in southern Idaho has coevolved in a predator-prey arms race with the lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta latifolia). The resulting divergent selection has favored a sedentary, locally adapted crossbill population whose size and vocalizations differ from those of co-occurring Red Crossbills of other call types. It has also led to high levels of reproductive isolation between the "South Hills crossbill" and nomadic taxa with different vocalizations that move in and out of the area yearly. Genetic analyses of amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) indicate that about 5% of the loci in the South Hills Crossbill have diverged in spite of the potentially homogenizing influence of gene flow. Given these differences in genetics, morphology, and behavior, and the high level of reproductive isolation in sympatry with other call types (99% of South Hills Crossbills pair assortatively), we !
recommend that this crossbill be recognized as a distinct species.

------------------------------------

Ted Floyd
tedfloyd57 at hotmail.com
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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