Taxonomic update -- January 2011
Pacific Wren/Ralph Hocken
The eBird taxonomy (discussed in full here) is available for download. This update brings eBird up to date with Clements 6.5, the most recent North American Classification Committee supplement (51st supplement), and South American Classification Committee decisions through 31 Dec 2010.
These taxonomic updates involve three major elements. First, we must change the common name, scientific name, family, order, sort order, and several other elements for everywhere that the name appears. Second, we must add in a number of entirely new species, including newly defined groups, new hybrids that eBirders would like to report, or new groups that may someday become species. The third element is the most complicated: record conversion.
Although eBirders' records are sacrosanct and we never edit your records in eBird, the one exception is these taxonomic updates. When these updates occur, we always find ourselves hoping that eBird groups (Identifiable Sub-Specific Forms) are being used. For every split (use Whip-poor-will as an example), we try to make sure that the groups correspond to potential future species. For Whip-poor-will we provided two groups: Whip-poor-will (Eastern) and Whip-poor-will (Mexican). When we updated the records, all records of Whip-poor-will (Eastern) converted automatically to Eastern Whip-poor-will, ditto for Whip-poor-will (Mexican). However, all records reported at the species level as Whip-poor-will were now definitely Eastern/Mexican Whip-poor-will, but we couldn't be more specific. Since these to forms have distinctive songs, any singing Whip-poor-will should have been identifiable. This leaves us with two options: 1) Leave all records as Eastern/Mexican Whip-poor-will, which will not count on bird lists, and leave it to our users to update when they can; 2) Make preliminary updates based on geography and date, and entrust our eBirders to fix the records if needed.
In the case of the Whip-poor-wills, we felt that we could safely make assumptions. We converted all eastern records (east of Colorado and east of the Trans-Pecos of Texas) to Eastern Whip-poor-will; we know of no records of Mexican Whip-poor-wills from there. In the west we made similar assumptions, since only Mexican Whip-poor-will is known from New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California. In most of Mexico, it is a safe assumption that it is Mexican Whip-poor-will, but in winter in east Mexico, and Belize/Guatemala south to Costa Rica, Eastern Whip-poor-will is possible. So for those records, we left them as Eastern/Mexican Whip-poor-wills. As you can see this is complicated, so we ask that you use the subspecies groups (ISSFs) when possible.
As fair warning, note that the AOU is now considering splitting Yellow-rumped Wabler (Myrtle) an Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's), along with one or two Mexican forms, into 2, 3 or 4 species, and it seems very likely to pass. When this happens, we can safely convert some eastern records to Myrtle Warbler, and some summer western records to Audubon's, but a huge proportion of records in the west (where both Audubon's and Myrtle are possible) will get converted to Myrtle/Audubon's Warbler. Without you telling us what you saw, we have no way of knowing. If you are not already in the habit of reporting your Yellow-rumped Warblers to subspecies, we encourage you to start now!
We'd like to specially acknowledge the hard work of Tom Schulenberg, avian taxonomist for the Clements checklist, and especially Tom Fredericks, our database manager, who puts in countless hours helping us to update the checklists, filters, records, and multiple eBird output tables that keep our life lists, arrival date tables, bar charts, and maps up to date. Without these Toms, this update would not have been possible, so thanks to them both.
