Subspecies: Views are changing, what about you?

[upupa-epops]

My perspective on bird subspecies is shaped by this understanding that they need some revision:

@birdwhisperer

@upupa-epops

I get the impression there was an excessive amount of new subspecies being described at some point in time and no one has cared enough to clean them up.

Yes, that is precisely what happened. In the 1890’s, the last few North America species were described (primarily grassland species in the northern Great Plains), and the rising generation of biologists basically got left with nothing. As such, there is a rather consistent trend of subspecies naming from 1900-1930. The American Ornithological Union was responsible for the reasonable curation of subspecies taxonomy, but when they acquired Central America and the Caribbean as part of the taxonomy in 1957, they decided to forego subspecies and focus on species-level decisions. And that in turn raised a generation of scientists that could care less about subspecies, and hence why we have a current taxonomy that’s 60+ years out-of-date.

For example my understanding is that Cassiar Junco results from intergrades of Oregon and Slate-coloured Juncos, but then why is Cassiar a whole subspecies on its own? Theoretically there could be a stable population of intergrade descendants, but in practice I’m guessing what we call Cassiar when we see them out of range are more likely direct intergrades?

The above then creates general skepticism of subspecies, which increases reluctance to ID them.

@upupa-epops

for sure essentially everyone identifying [Pica magpies] is going by range, same with American and European Herring Gulls and many other species. I think opposition to geography-based subspecies ID comes from a combination of discomfort with geography-based ID in general and discomfort with subspecies taxonomy together.

I think iNaturalist would be greatly benefitted by adding subspecies groups like eBird has. For example Slate-coloured and Oregon Juncos are both recognizable phenotypes, but both are composed of multiple subspecies that generally aren’t recognizable. Unless someone goes and synonymizes them, the best we could do is use observation fields to categorize them. And I don’t have much hope for subspecies groups being added given the demand for species groups that hasn’t gone anywhere so far.