Proposal (5) to South American Classification Committee

Use AOU checklist (1998) classification of Ciconiiformes

After seeing how outdated the classification of the Ardeidae was in the Howard-Moore draft, rather than inundate you with a bunch of little proposals that I assume would be non-controversial and that will almost certainly be changed on next Howard-Moore draft anyway (e.g., changing Egretta alba to Ardea alba; Louisiana Heron to Tricolored Heron; changing American Wood Ibis to Wood Stork, etc.), I propose the following:

Dump the H&M baseline classification and use AOU '98 instead for Ciconiiformes. AOU '98 incorporates recent data from Sheldon and others. We can always change that if you don't like it.

Vote "YES" to start with AOU '98, "NO" to start with Howard-Moore.

Note: on previous message concerning AOU Ciconiiformes, I did not mention Cathartidae, treated as a family of that order by AOU '98. There is enough lingering controversy that I think we should restrict current vote to "traditional" Ciconiiformes, without Cathartidae -- inclusion of the latter is a separate issue (for which I think we should solicit comments from outside the Committee, given that most of our research interests do not involve higher-level systematics).

Van Remsen, 26 Oct. 2000