Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Sighting Widely Accepted

It would be an interesting and elaborate April Fools joke if that were the case.

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Does anyone know if Automated Recording Units (ARUs) have been deployed in the search for ivory-billeds?

I think the authors of the preprint make that fairly evident: The USFWS has published a proposed rule to declare the IBWO extinct. That action, if finalized, could have significant effects on efforts and funding related to the species. The finalization of that rule could potentially happen prior to the completion of any peer review due to the lag time of the latter process–whatever the outcome of that review. I viewed the distribution of the preprint and any subsquent publicity surrounding it as just an announcement to the effect of [my words], “Hold on, wait just a second before you finalize that rule. There’s some additional data that needs to be reviewed.” I don’t want to put words in the mouths of the authors, but that was my sense of the timing.

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Depends on the types of birds. There is a lot of intergeneric hybridization in ducks and hummingbirds; in fact, they seem to embrace it! But in a case like woodpeckers, hybridization in general seems pretty rare unless you’re a sapsucker (ugh, don’t bird the Cascades, everything there is Red-breasted x Red-naped). But on the other hand, conspecifics or closely related species are known to hybridize if the rarer species cannot find a suitable partner. It looks like the two are pretty distant in the phylogenetic tree, but once again, anything’s possible if there’s only IBWO left in a certain region.

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I think at least in Galloanserae that’s a group trait of easy hybridization.
@charlie having white feathers from trauma (commonly seen in sparrows for example) or mutation/disease probably a more reasonable explonaton for that feature.

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16 posts were split to a new topic: Is potential for hybridization related to taxonomic rank?

interesting that they are in different genera given they seem so similar but maybe it’s evolutionary convergence. Too bad. i thought it was an interesting idea. Could still be true but sounds unlikely.

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That’s a fair point, considering the pending decision by USFWS. To me that’s not as final of a decision as it seems and could be quickly reversed if solid evidence were to become available. The Black-footed Ferret was declared extinct and then two years later it was rediscovered. Thanks to rapid actions by federal and state agencies and subsequent captive breeding efforts it’s still with us today.

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I want to make it clear that I agree with @gcwarbler. I have an opinion on the topic, but it is not an informed one. Therefore, it is not relevant. My meme post above simply struck me as funny. I have hopes, but I have no idea whether these data can be considered valid, or even if this was an attempt to circumvent rules. We will see what happens. I remain, as most folks seem to do, undecided.

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Exactly. If the species were rediscovered, that reversal would become a top priority. On the other hand, one could argue that the 2005 IBWO “rediscovery” paper caused a lot of time and resources to be diverted away from other species that genuinely needed them. I see the proposed rule as bringing the listing status up to speed with the state of science on the species - that it is extinct.

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I should add that my skepticism stems in part from professional experience with other endangered species where a lot of time, funding, and effort was expended based on highly questionable evidence for occurrences that ultimately could not be supported. I certainly support being an advocate for endangered species but sometimes the desire to conserve them gets way ahead of the best available evidence of their status.

However, if the IBWO is someday truly rediscovered (as was the Black-footed Ferret), I’ll gladly admit that I was wrong.

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if they can sample water for dna for fish can they sample wood chips for dna of IBWP

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I watched the video that was on the original link, and without offering an opinion on the bird(s) id, I think the clips do show how difficult the terrain is to track them down there, or to meaningfully do some of the other experiments suggested above. Notably, when all the leaves grow out even more than in the video, it would be even more difficult to track something in there.

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With regard to this paper being a preprint and therefore not peer-reviewed: It has been peer-reviewed, and more extensively than most published research ever is. For instance, if Alex Lees’s commentary were in an email to an editor at a journal, we would call it “peer review”. The same commentary made publicly differs in its relationship to journal publication, but that doesn’t make it less valuable as an evaluation of the work. Arguably, it is more valuable when public.

We’re in an interesting transitional time. The traditional academic publishing model doesn’t really make sense any more. We’re moving towards a de facto “publish online and do post-publication peer review on social media” model, though this seems to be more accidental than designed.

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In the old days we typed up our manuscript on a selectric typewriter, mailed it to an editor in a Manila envelope, and then waited 6 months for a response by mail, typically with red ink scribbles all over our flawless submission. We didn’t need no internets. And we liked it that way! Actually that wasn’t so great ….

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Can I ask a dumb question? Are the researchers who contributed to the paper well regarded in the field? I know experts make mistakes, but for me, the credibility of the authors narrows the possibilities of how to interpret the paper to an extent–highly respected authors would probably mean not a hoax, though error remains a possibility. I’m just wondering how much weight/expertise these researchers have?

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Well, at least the “wait 6 months” part still holds. :-)

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With at least another 6 months —often more — before it actually appeared in print.

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There are journals that require the work be submitted to a preprint server before they will even accept it for review. And I believe there are also grants that require the work be made freely available, and a preprint server is much less expensive than making the final journal version open access (depending on the journal).

Taxpayer funded work should never be available exclusively behind a journal paywall anyway, especially when the journals are a significant net siphon for public money in publication fees. Improved de facto peer review is a nice bonus.

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Luckily, most researchers want their work to be read. I’ve found it increasingly unusual to have trouble accessing research published since preprint servers, ResearchGate, etc., have been available.

At this point, academic journals are basically selling academic credibility. Universities measure the value of researchers by the journals they publish in. So, if you want to be employed, you pay for it.

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