Proposal
(53) to South
American Check-list Committee
Adopt a new English
name for Myrmeciza castanea
Background: In 1932 John T. Zimmer proposed a new
taxon of antbird, castanea, as a subspecies of the widespread Myrmeciza
hemimelaena, Chestnut-tailed Antbird. Castanea later was synonymized
by Peters. More recently, Isler et al. (2002, Auk 119: 362-378) demonstrated
that castanea differed vocally from hemimelaena, that the two
were narrowly syntopic, and that castanea not only should be recognized
as a valid taxon but also should be given the rank of species. SACC already has
endorsed this taxonomy (our Proposal 16).
Isler et al. 2002 also proposed the English
names Northern Chestnut-tailed Antbird for Myrmeciza castanea and
Southern Chestnut-tailed Antbird for Myrmeciza hemimelaena. At the time
that SACC adopted Proposal 16, several of us made negative comments (still
posted on our web site) regarding the suggested English names.
Analysis: My own views - negative - on compound group
names are expressed (at length) in my comments on our Proposal 48, and I will
not repeat them here. Suffice it to say I'd prefer almost anything to a name in
the form "Xxxxx Chestnut-tailed Antbird".
For now I will propose that we retain
"Chestnut-tailed Antbird" for the widespread species Myrmeciza
hemimelaena, and adopt a new name, "Zimmer's Antbird", for
Myrmeciza castanea. I believe that the name "Zimmer's Antbird" in
fact first was proposed by Mort Isler, as a tribute to John Zimmer's role in
recognizing and naming castanea in the first place. This would similar to, say,
the name "Chapman's Antshrike" for Thamnophilus zarumae, who originally
described it.
I should make clear that I am more than willing
to consider alternative names for castanea if anyone proposes something
else better in the form of "Xxxx Antbird". But for the moment,
"Zimmer's Antbird" is my best alternative to "Northern
Chestnut-tailed Antbird".
In response to the initial negative reactions
to "Northern Chestnut-tailed Antbird", by the way, Mort Isler wrote
the following to Van (also posted on our web site, under Proposal 16):
"With regard to the English names of M.
hemimelaena and M. castanea, we canvassed all of the coauthors of
our recent Auk paper (119:362-378) except Thomas Valqui, whom we understand is
in the field in Peru. All three of the remaining authors expressed a strong
preference for maintaining the English names of M. hemimelaena and M.
castanea proposed in the paper. We gather that you received Bret
[Whitney]'s comments directly. The consensus of their comments is that they
thought that the English names proposed in the paper were appropriate and that
the known geographic range overlap between hemimelaena and castanea
is too narrow to require changing them.
"With
regard to the second possible objection, although the range of M. hemimelaena
extends much further east than the range of M. castanea, the range of M.
hemimelaena is entirely south of the Amazon/Marañon and the range of M.
castanea, except for the extension into the San Martín region, is north of
the Amazon/Marañón. Therefore, we feel that the descriptive names of "Southern"
and "Northern" are valid.
"None
of the other authors got very excited about our suggestion of possibly changing
the English name of M. castanea to Zimmer's Antbird.
"After
due consideration, therefore, we have to report that it is the authors'
recommendation that the English names for M. castanea and M. hemimelaena
remain as proposed in the paper.
"We
appreciate your consulting us on the matter."
Recommendation: My recommendation, of
course, would be to vote "Yes", to change the English name of Myrmeciza
castanea from "Northern Chestnut-tailed Antbird" to
"Zimmer's Antbird" (or to a better name, if anyone creates such a
thing, as long as it is nice and simple).
Tom Schulenberg, August
2003
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Comments from Remsen: "I vote YES on
this proposal -- no surprise, as I was a ring-leader in opposing the
awkwardness of the original English name. Like Tom, I strongly favor shorter
names all-else-being-equal, and I dislike compound names for the reasons I gave
in my "XXX Seaside-Cinclodes" proposal. Regardless, I am particularly
opposed to the compound name in this case because these names are traditionally
reserved for allopatric/parapatric species ... clearly not the case in this
case -- in fact, it was their sympatry that was crucial in identifying castanea
as a species-level taxon."
Comments from Robbins: "I vote
"yes" for the using "Zimmer's Antbird" for Myrmeciza
castanea for reasons outlined by Van."
Comments from Stiles: "I go with
Zimmer's Antbird for reasons given above. Not very pretty but less cumbersome
and about as appropriate as the alternative."
Comments from Zimmer: "I vote
"yes" on this proposal. Although I do not have the same visceral
reaction to compound names that Tom has, I do find "Northern
Chestnut-tailed Antbird" and "Southern Chestnut-tailed Antbird"
to be really awkward. I also agree with Van that such names really should be
reserved for allopatric taxa. I think that "Zimmer's Antbird" does a
nice job of recognizing the person who first pointed out the distinctiveness of
castanea, and I voiced this opinion
to Mort Isler when he first suggested the name as an alternate to the names
used in the paper that split castanea.
I generally don't like to mess with the
names suggested by the authors, but this is one case where such a case is
called for. And, contrary to Gary's comment about the suggested name not being
"pretty", I find myself thinking that "Zimmer's Antbird"
has a kind of nice ring to it!"
Addendum from Schulenberg: "I remember that
some time in the 1980s Ted Parker was carting around LSU a set of proposed
changes to English names of tyrant flycatchers. I guess that these proposed
changes had been sent to Ted for his comments, I don't know. The basic idea was
that this person apparently no longer could cope with names like
"bristle-tyrant", "tody-tyrant", "pygmy-tyrant"
and the like, and wanted to simplify all of these to "flycatcher".
Ted, who was at least as good as I am at working himself into a state of
righteous indignation, was beside himself over this idea: how could anyone not
see that "bristle-tyrant" meant Pogonotriccus
and that that *meant* something??? Ted got worked up, we all had a laugh, and
the whole thing faded away (thank goodness). "All of which is a long
winded way of saying, in response to Mark Robbin's comments on my diatribe in
relation to Proposal 48, that I recognize that there are many *great* English
names for Neotropical birds that are compound in nature: besides the ones
already mentioned, where would we be without "foliage-gleaner"? and
so on. 'So, yes, although I prefer names that are simple in structure over
names that are more complicated, *other things being equal*, I am *not*
suggesting that we strip ourselves of well-established, highly useful compound
group names. "What I was railing
against was the recent tendency to create new (and in my view, less useful) compound
group names in response to a simple species "split". My comments were
prompted, after all, by a proposal to turn a "cinclodes" into two
"seaside-cinclodes". I also had a negative response to recently
proposed names for a split in Myrmeciza
(now our proposal 53). And I've never been happy with the notion of turning one
Slaty Antshrike into a whole slew of "xxxx Slaty-Antshrikes". From
Gary Stiles' comments (on proposal 53), I gather that I am not alone in this. "So, please interpret my critique of compound
group names within the narrower context that I have tried to describe here."
Comments from Nores: "[YES] Si estoy de acuerdo. No solo por ser un nombre más corto y apropiado, sino
también por un reconocimiento a Zimmer."