Does anyone have any idea what is going on with woolly-necked storks? iNaturalist identifies the Asian woolly-necked stork (C. episcopus) and the African woolly-necked stork (C. microscelis) with clear distribution maps. The two standard works for southern African birds are Roberts and Sasol. Roberts definitively states that there is only one woolly-necked stork in both Africa and Asia (C. episcopus), whilst Sasol only identifies C. microscelis in Africa. I am inclined to agree with iNaturalist and Sasol, but it is unusual for Roberts to be incorrect. I don’t think that I have missed a taxon change. Does anyone have any insight?
Thanks in advance.
“(C. microscelis) was formerly considered a subspecies of the Asian woolly-necked stork (C. episcopus), and called the woolly-necked stork, but was split as a distinct species by the International Ornithological Congress in 2023 on the basis of its allopatric range and significant plumage and morphological differences.” (WikiPedia)
BirdLife made the split in 2014.
Ghimire et al claims genetic confirmation but I don’t find it self-evident on a cursory read of the paper. References for the morphological split go back to around 2010 (paywalled).
AviList, the Global Avian Checklist, has the following.
https://www.avilist.org/checklist/v2025b/
Ciconia microscelis - African Woolly-necked Stork
Ciconia episcopus - Asian Woolly-necked Stork
“Taxon microscelis (monotypic) is treated as a species separate from Ciconia episcopus (polytypic) based on consistent differences in morphology (including plumage) and biogeographic considerations, the taxa being allopatric on separate continents.”
Would a flag on the taxon be a more appropriate place for this discussion?
Asian woolly-necked stork: flags
African woolly-necked stork: flags
no, the question was already answered above (and this is more a general question about taxonomic differences across different sources, Roberts in particular, than a request for an iNat taxon change or something along those lines)—African (C. microscelis) and Asian (C. episcopus) woolly-necked storks were formerly considered conspecific (as woolly-necked stork C. episcopus), but were recently split (and the latest edition of Roberts was published prior to that split)