Comments on: New Trip Report: Kenya

By: Coke Smith

Coke Smith — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 10:00:05 +0000

Thanks for the information on the debate on the taxonomy. I was a bit confused myself as the split seemed to be a bit dubious….And thanks for the bird corrections – got them just have not updated yet. All except the chat that is – thanks. Not sure about the galago split you asked about.

By: Morgan Churchill

Morgan Churchill — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:04:50 +0000

Hhhmm..won’t let me reply below

Anyway, while I disagree with the criticisms of PSC, I don’t disagree with the problem splits that the author’s the paper posted below comment on. Splitting any taxon should only occur when multiple lines of evidence (multiple genes, morphology, etc) are available. What’s more I would argue that having read the recent Grubb and Colin ungulate taxonomy treatise, I don’t even think they are practicing PSC. They are using the morphological species concept through and through, and in some cases actually ignore phylogeny when it disagrees with their conclusions (IIRC).

By: Vladimir Dinets

Vladimir Dinets — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:28:40 +0000

Zachos F. E. et al. Species inﬂation and taxonomic artefacts—A critical comment on recent trends in mammalian classiﬁcation. Mammal. Biol. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2012.07.083

By: Charles Foley

Charles Foley — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 07:02:49 +0000

Me too. Could you post it on here?

By: Morgan Churchill

Morgan Churchill — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 23:36:15 +0000

Do you have the citation for the paper? I would be interesting in reading it

By: vdinets

vdinets — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:19:28 +0000

Arjan: a paper just came out arguing that most ungulate splits proposed in recent years (particularly by Groves and Grubb) have no scientific evidence to support them and should be ignored. So there is only one klipspringer, one Grant’s gazelle, and so on.

By: Arjan Dwarshuis

Arjan Dwarshuis — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:44:22 +0000

Great report!

I saw warthogs in shaba and samburu and thought they were desert, but wasn’t quite shure. Is grant’s gazelle split as a species or ssp? I saw a genet at the mountain lodge at mount Kenya (giant hog, suni, tree hyrax were easy here), do you know for shure wether they are blotched or common? i thought blotched…Thanks for the bat ID at shaba. I think i saw yellow-winged bat there to.

Some comments on your bird photo’s: Imperial eagle is a juv martial eagle
Kenrick’s starling is a sooty chat (kenrick’s starling is a difficult bird in the mount kenya region)

I saw a black morph ‘siver galago’ in the mara, do you know wether they are split from greater galago???

kind regards,

Arjan Dwarshuis, the Netherlands