Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 19:13:13 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bill Ellis Subject: Re: A little question In-Reply-To: <20031120190847.39295.qmail@web12401.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marcus: I believe that the reason the Patuxent site shows grebes in Ciconiiformes is because of the somewhat radical conclusions of Sibley (Charles, not David) and Ahlquist based on their DNA-DNA hybridization research in the 1980s and early 1990s. A lot of their conclusions have been seriously questioned because of conflicting scientific evidence. For instance, their assignment of New World Vultures to the stork family (Ciconiidae) instead of with the hawks and eagles has been countered with data showing no such relationship. That question is still not resolved. Patuxent has done what I did a few years ago - swallowed Sibley and Ahlquist's findings hook, line, and sinker. I now consider the Monroe and Sibley World Checklist of Birds (1993) an aberration in the history of avian taxonomy. Much of the work Sibley/Ahlquist did was revolutionary, innovative, and deserving of great admiration. But they overextended the interpretations of their data. They embarrassed themselves the worst with their faulty, very biased, interpretation of simian DNA studies, which may have led to the attack by scientists on all their work. Check this out, but don't believe it all - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibley-Ahlquist_taxonomy Don't believe Patuxent or S&A - use your intuition - grebes are really more closely related to the Little Brown Jobs (LBJs = sparrows) - look at the Pied-billed Grebe! Bill Ellis Student of Avian Taxonomy MOS - Carroll County -----Original Message----- From: Marcus James Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 2:09 PM Hello I was just at the Patuxent Wildlife Research site, looking up the Pied-billed Grebe. When I looked up it's Taxonomy, it said the grebe is in the order Ciconiformes. ... Has there been a 'new' ornithological 'conclusion' that says this ... ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================