Proposal
to (2) South American Checklist Committee
Change
English name of Galapagos Storm-Petrel to Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel.
This
proposal made obsolete by a change in Howard-Moore baseline list -- they have
changed it to Wedge-rumped.
The Howard-Moore baseline
list that I sent you still uses "Galapagos Storm-Petrel" for Oceanodroma
tethys. However, this name is no longer used by most references. It is
"Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel" in AOU Checklist (1998), Handbook of
Birds of the World, Sibley and Monroe (1990), Blake (1977), and Meyer de
Schauensee (1970), as well as all recent regional/country guides in Neotropics
and seabird books that I checked.
The reason for the change,
historically, is that the subspecies of "Galapagos" S-P kelsalli breeds
on islands off Peru, and this is the taxon that has been recorded in North
America. Personally, I don't think that was sufficient reason to sacrifice the
previously stable historical name --- otherwise, we ought to change
"Philadelphia Vireo" to something else, for example. Nevertheless, I
don't see any point in trying to reverse several decades of usage.
I propose that we use
"Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel."
Van
Remsen, October 2000