Proposal (1022) to South American Classification Committee

Establish English names for Xenops minutus split

In proposal 996, SACC voted to separate Xenops genibarbis (including obsoletus, ruficaudus, remoratus, and alagoanus) and Xenops mexicanus (including ridgwayi, littoralis, olivaceus, and neglectus) from Xenops minutus (monotypic).

X minutus has been treated as a species by both HBW (since 2018) and IOC (since 2023), with the English name White-throated Xenops.

Neither trans-Andean X mexicanus nor cis-Andean (Amazonian, essentially) X genibarbis appear to have prior English names with a lot of traction. Hilty, in the most recent Colombia guide book, uses the names “Northwestern Plain Xenops” for mexicanus and “Southeastern Plain Xenops” for genibarbis. BirdLife International appears to be using “Northern Xenops” for X mexicanus and “Amazonian Xenops” for X genibarbis (at least as placeholders). No other books I have at hand nor searching I have done uncovered any other references to English names for these two taxa.

Given the widespread nature of all three of these species and the fact that all three are commonly observed and well known, it seems untenable to retain Plain Xenops for any of the three.

There really aren’t any compelling plumage or physical characteristics to look to for naming. Given the similar character of songs between Xenops in general and the lack of precedent for voice based names in this group, it seems like a poor choice for a source of names.

Given the precedent of White-throated Xenops for X minutus (ss), and the fact that that taxon does have the whitest throat, it seems prudent to use this name, and this is what I propose.

Again, given the small nature of the genus and the very well-known nature of the birds it seems that straightforward and simple names that avoid confusion are all that is needed.

Thus, for mexicanus and genibarbis I recommend using the names suggested by HBW – Northern Xenops for mexicanus and Amazonian Xenops for genibarbis. The change from Plain to Northern Xenops for trans-Andean birds should be very straightforward for birders and ornithologists and should not provoke confusion or controversy. Although genibarbis is not the only Xenops in the Amazon, within the context of this split and the re-arrangement of Xenops taxa the name Amazonian is particularly fitting as it distinguishes it from existing taxa and, along with Northern for mexicanus, helps users of English names instantly correlate all three English names to their corresponding species.

This can be a simple YES / NO vote, but NO votes should please provide alternate suggestions. Let’s make this a 3-part choice:

A. Northern Xenops

B. Amazonian Xenops

C. White-throated Xenops

I recommend a YES on all three parts of this proposal.

Josh Beck, July 2024

Comments from Donsker (who has Bonaccorso’s vote): “I vote a strong “YES” to all three of the names that Josh has proposed:”

A. Xenops mexicanus Northern Xenops

B. Xenops genibarbis Amazonian Xenops

C. Xenops minutus White-throated Xenops

Comments from Mark Pearman (who has Areta’s vote): “NO. What's most important here is how useful the new names can be to birders for field identification. Northern mexicanus overlaps with Streaked Xenops and all this name does is roughly inform us where it occurs. It doesn't help with identification. I would much rather use Northern Plain Xenops which greatly helps the observer. We instantly know what we are talking about. It's not such a mouthful as Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet and it is far more informative than just using Northern Xenops. 

Along the same lines, Amazonian genibarbis overlaps with two species of xenops, neither of which are plain looking. Here again the Plain modifier would greatly help. I prefer to use Amazonian Plain Xenops to cause less confusion and help the observer in the field.

Lastly, using White-throated Xenops for minutus is fine if you are comparing a drawer full of wide-ranging former X. minutus taxa in a museum, but unfortunately Streaked Xenops in the Atlantic forest has a very white throat, if not even more noticeably white than in minutus. Using the name White-throated is flawed. Therefore, in keeping with geographical terms, I would prefer to use Atlantic Plain Xenops, and again we all know what we are talking about.

That genibarbis also occurs in extreme north-east Brazil upsets the latter name slightly, but in general terms I think that Northern Plain Xenops, Amazonian Plain Xenops, and Atlantic Plain Xenops is the best overall solution. I vote YES to these three names.

Additional comments from Remsen: “Although I have already given up my official vote on this one, I strongly support Mark’s position above. Many people don’t like the long group names, but many find them helpful for signaling close relatives. The group names really make it much easier for all of us to keep track of splits like this. They provide information content that is lost when we use the simpler names. Yes, they are mouthfuls and clunky, but in practice, no one uses the formal group names in conversation. They are generally restricted to printed text. They maintain the obvious link to a previous classification and thus produce just minor turbulence in terms of stability. For this very reason, we recently reversed our positions on group names for some of the trogon splits. Mark’s point on the two Beardless-Tyrannulets is apropos. Ornithology and birding has survived the long (and hyphenated) group names here, and no one in informal conversation is obligated to crank out the entire “Southern Beardless-Tyrannulet” but that group name.”

Comments solicited from Marshall Iliff: “Voting slots seem to have been taken, but just to go on record the eBird/Clements and IOC teams have independently aligned around these names as well, and I would strongly support these for all the reasons laid out in the proposal. So I recommend a “yes” to Northern Xenops, Amazonian Xenops, and White-throated Xenops.”

Additional comments from Tom Schulenberg: “I would be happy with Josh's recommendations: Northern Xenops, Amazonian Xenops, and White-throated Xenops. I realize that none of these names are uniquely descriptive, but few names are. on the other hand, they are descriptive, and they're short and snappy. that's plenty good enough for my taste. and I'm not that worried about 'keeping track of splits', by the way. in theory, we're choosing names for the long haul. A lot of the angst over name changes seems to come from aging birders who may be faced with declining cognitive abilities; that's just the kind of consideration that often gets us sucked into long, convoluted names that within a few years will have outlived their usefulness anyway.”

Comments from Rasmussen (who has Robbins’ vote): “I also vote YES to all three names recommended in the proposal: 

1. Xenops mexicanus Northern Xenops

2. Xenops genibarbis Amazonian Xenops

3. Xenops minutus White-throated Xenops

“I note that Little Xenops has been used in the Mexican literature at least (e.g. by Irby Davis) but this was for the lumped species X. minutus, and they all seem to be similar in size anyway.”

Comments from Peter Kaestner (voting for Claramunt): “YES. Now I see why Van ducked this one.  I would have happily voted for the original proposal — but I do find Mark’s counter intriguing. On balance, however, I am swayed by Marshall’s indication that eBird and IOC are coalescing around the original proposal (or is this the tail wagging the dog???). I vote for Josh’s initial proposal, Northern, Amazonian, and White-throated.”

Additional comments from Remsen: “I’m hoping that the eBird/Clements/IOC people will not stay wedded to names that barely have any traction if they think there are a better set of names out there that they could use for the long haul. This is one reason why eBird/Clements/IOC people might consider floating potential names to a regional group like this for broader input before locking on to a set of names. Everybody wins in the long run. The current names might be the best options, but they might not be. Also, concerning Tom’s comment about us being “aging birders who may be faced with declining cognitive abilities”, that is clearly true in my case, but it is not the motivation for the compound names, which are intended to make it easier for people, especially new people, to learn about relationships within a genus and even to use those relationships to help them in the field. I’m assuming here that a substantial portion of birders find those things useful and interesting; when birding more than just one region of the Neotropics, they are also useful in field identification. Also, it eases the transition from the current name to the new one instead or rendering obsolete nearly every bit of printed literature that they own. For example, “Amazonian Xenops” is not helpful, as Mark pointed out, whereas “Amazonian Plain-Xenops” makes it clear that one is looking at the Amazonian form of the former broadly defined Plain Xenops. Tom’s point about “long, convoluted names” outliving their usefulness is valid for birds that are on everyone’s radar, like “Saltmarsh Sparrow” evolving from “Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow”, but is less applicable to cases like these xenops, which other than for a few super-active Neotropical birders, are encountered by English-speakers only occasionally. Even within North American, no one that I know of is whining about the need to change “Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet” (6 syllables) to something simpler, perhaps because it takes a special effort to travel to see one, just like for any xenops. Some people actually think those long names make the bird sound more exotic. Finally, no laws have been passed yet that prevent people from using shortened names in conversational birding.”

Comments from Mario Cohn-Haft (voting for Remsen): “NO. This is turning out to be more fun (in a trivial kinda way) than i imagined at first. I also find Mark Pearman's comments and suggestions compelling and admit to having thought along those lines quietly to myself without commenting. As a johnny-come-lately, i just figured there was some sort of rule about number of words in the name that i didn't know and didn't feel like asking about.

“However, i think that not recognizing species groups (either in common or scientific names) is one of the relatively few disservices that we commit with all this splitting. For example, the English common names for Hypocnemis spp. actually do a better job indicating that within all those current spp., all but one form a species complex (the H. cantator or Warbling-Antbird complex) and that the other, H. hypoxantha, which would superficially appear to have the same "weight" as any one of the previous, is actually also a complex just waiting to be split up similarly. Unfortunately, my students in Brazil almost never use or know the English common names, and so they don't have a clue that the notion of species applied within the genus is not uniform or coherent. In other words, our common names can help (that's a bit of a revelation for me)!

“In thinking about the Xenops minutus case, i wonder if X. rutilans is likely to get split one of these days. If so, then all of a sudden the relatively trivial issue of not including anything in the names of the splits to indicate relevant phenotype or relatedness in a complex becomes more important. With no more Streaked Xenops co-occurring to help keep things straight, there's just a bunch of "xenops" whose common names aren't helpful anymore. With that in mind then, I'm in favor of Mark's proposal.”

Comments from Stiles: “While I think that Josh Beck’s names (White-throated, Northern and Amazonian) for minutus, mexicanus and genibarbis respectively are OK, I note that part of the range of genibarbis along the Caribbean lowlands of Venezuela and the Guianas actually falls to the north of the southern end of the range of mexicanus: it is not restricted to the Amazonian watershed. Another wrinkle: in del Hoyo et al. (2020), the E-name of genibarbis is given as simply Plain Xenops and its range is depicted as extending north through Mesoamerica to Mexico.. and the Middle American portion of the range of X. rutilans is NOT: it is given as restricted entirely to South America! This is precisely the kind of error that can result from “jumping the gun” and splitting only a small part (only minuta here) of a more complex situation.”

Additional comments from Josh Beck: “"I didn't realize this would generate so much discussion. Some really good points have been raised. I agree with the idea of retaining parts of names to link back to taxonomy in many cases. I was an ardent supporter of the compound names in the naming of the Black-throated Trogon daughter species, and I think that compound names for Beardless-Tyrannulets and Mouse-colored Tyrannulets are worth the convoluted length. In the case of the Trogons, the whole group is full of birds that have non-unique names that English name users struggle to identify. The Beardless and Mouse-colored Tyrannulets are well known birds within a group of 60-70 or more Tyrannulets. Novel names would get lost in the sea of Tyrannulets or Trogons and be very hard to associate back to the original species. I don't think, though, that that is the case with the Xenops. The genus Xenops now has 5 species. There will now be 7 total species with the English name Xenops. This isn't a situation that is ripe for confusion. I also don't think cognitive decline needs to be considered here. Despite the fact that the southernmost Northern Xenops would occur barely south of the northernmost Amazonian Xenops, or that there are more than one Amazonian Xenops or that Northern Xenops isn't the only Xenops in North America, none of those are really going to cause anyone a problem. The vast majority of Northern and Southern and Amazonian species names have these issues but if the name more or less puts you on the right bird and/or more or less avoids confusion, I think it is totally fine. A pattern that I see in English name discussions here is discarding really useful common sense names that are slightly flawed in pursuit of something unimpeachable.

“I personally prefer Atlantic Xenops to White-throated Xenops but declined to suggest it due to the fact that White-throated is already reasonably established. If that becomes the preferred name, I would be completely in favor of it. In terms of using compound names, it would be fine, but I just view it as very unnecessary in this particular case."

Comments from Gary Rosenberg (voting for Del-Rio): “I vote YES on the proposal:

A. Xenops mexicanus Northern Xenops

B. Xenops genibarbis Amazonian Xenops

C. Xenops minutus White-throated Xenops

“Reading all the comments, I agree that I would prefer “Atlantic” for minutus”, as I am in favor of indicating those species that have the unique distribution of the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil - but I also see the importance of trying to get the major listing groups - in particular IOC, SACC, and eBird to all use the same name. White-throated is a descriptive name that doesn’t really distinguish this Xenops from any other Xenops - AND if we are going with geographic names for the OTHER two - Northern and Amazonian, I don’t quite understand why we won’t use a geographic name for the third one! Seems inconsistent to me.

“I am not concerned that Amazonian extends slightly north of the southern limit of Northern” - I am sure there are other examples of species pairs that fall into this situation. Using Northern and Amazonian will be easy for birders - and it will be rather obvious which ones is which (from range if not from plumage or vocalizations).

“I do like the idea of including modifiers to help distinguish difficult groups - i.e. using “Beardless” with the tyrannulets - and using “Black-throated” for the trogon split - to help birders zero in on a particular group quickly. With the case of the “Plain” Xenops – this “may” be helpful - but there are few other species groups really confusing with Xenops - and I am not worried about confusion with Streaked. If Streaked Xenops is eventually further split - then I might be more in favor of keeping “Streaked” in THOSE new names to help the observer zero in on the “Streaked” versus “Plain” type Xenops.”

So - I. Am happy with the current proposal - but would prefer using “Atlantic” over “White-throated” since all Xenops are White-throated (as has been pointed out) - but more importantly, to be consistent if we are using geographic modifiers for the other two.

Comments from Areta: “"It is admittedly difficult to find good names for these Xenops, and the names in the original proposal are aiming in the right direction. 

“1) Atlantic is infinitely better than White-throated. Northern and Amazonian are not outstanding, but they do the job (although Amazonian is inaccurate, as pointed out by Gary, it is still better than Pantanal Snipe...) and all voters seem to agree in that these two options are not so problematic. Turning to White-throated, it is both: novel and erroneous, and it is not based on geography like the other two, even when it is the most easily defined in terms of geography by calling it Atlantic. I do not see that the name White-throated has gained any real traction in the literature, even when in use in some platforms, and I think that changing it now before it is too late is better than having to endure a name that will cause identification problems in birds that are often difficult to observe with enough detail. 

“2) Xenops vs Plain Xenops. I agree with Mark and others in that it is useful to keep the ‘Plain’ modifier, as it conveys an idea of relationships and helps trace the history of the name change for list-keeping reasons, and is really not disruptive with IOC or eBird names (it is easy to add the Plain bit to the current names without compromising communication)."

Note from Remsen: “Because even those voting for the proposal in its entirety indicate that they would like “Atlantic” more than “White-throated”, when the proposal reaches threshold, I will have a second round “runoff election: between those two names for minutus.”

Comments from Zimmer: “NO. I find Mark’s reasoning compelling on every level, and much prefer keeping the group name of Plain Xenops, and then adding a geographic modifier (Northern, Amazonian, Atlantic).  Van’s analogy of the trogon situation is spot-on – Amazonian Xenops doesn’t really help anyone differentiate this species from X. tenuirostris, and White-throated Xenops, while not inaccurate, does invite confusion with sympatric subspecies of X. rutilans, which, as Mark points out, do have even more prominently white throats than minutus.  Also, just from the perspective of symmetry, it does seem odd to use geographic modifiers for 2 of the 3 species, and then a descriptive modifier for the other one. Using the group name of Plain Xenops should allow beginning birders to immediately eliminate all subspecies of Streaked Xenops from consideration, as well as Slender-billed Xenops which is also streaked. Within that basic framework, Northern, Amazonian and Atlantic as modifiers should allow easy pinpointing of the ID, and, at the same time, convey relationship information and maintain some continuity to all field guides and other references that pre-date the split.   really don’t get the relevance of invoking “aging birders faced with declining cognitive abilities” in this context — everything we’re talking about here is a new name — the whole point of this Proposal is to change names, so I don’t see any resistance to change involved. In this particular case, I would argue that the eBird names really don’t have that much traction — certainly not in any printed literature – and I think Peter’s “tail wagging the dog” question is pretty appropriate. While I’m not a fan of overly long, compound names, I would prefer a longer name that actually conveys some useful information, to a short name that tells us nothing — Mario’s comments here are especially worth consideration. So, to summarize, NO to the suggested names, but retain Northern and Amazonian as modifiers to the group name of Plain Xenops, and then replace “White-throated” with Atlantic as the modifier to the group name Plain Xenops.”

Comments from Lane: “NO. I find Mark’s suggestions of Northern, Amazonian, and Atlantic Plain Xenops to be persuasive, and don’t paint us into a corner should Streaked Xenops need splitting. I will vote to accept those names.”

Additional comments from Peter Kaestner: “In the interest of being agreeable, I wish to change my vote to NO on the Beck proposal and to agree to Mark’s counter-proposal to include the word Plain, and to use Atlantic for the white-throated form.”

Comments from Stiles: “NO. For the E-names for the 3 species of Xenops I am persuaded by Mark's point here (i-e., retaining "Plain" in these names to connect with the former single-species name, and I also like the E-names based on the geography - so Northern, Amazonian and Atlantic Plain Xeonopses do it for me.”

Comments solicited from Steve Hilty: “As you know, I am not bothered at all by long names–and retaining group names (or some variation thereof), I think are especially helpful. I did include a potential split of the old Xenops minutus (a.k.a. genibarbis, mexicanus, etc.) in my Birds of Colombia (2021), separating the cis- and trans- groups. Songs of these groups do differ, but there is quite a lot of variation, especially I think, in the Amazonian birds, so a split doesn't seem all that compelling on this basis alone. Compelling plumage differences also are also a bit elusive. . . Maybe there is other evidence?

“As regards a name, I wouldn't spend much time trying to coin a descriptive name—all of these little Xenops look pretty much alike from a galloping horse. Descriptive differences in plumages certainly will be of minimal value in field, as will behavior. I would focus on geographic names . . . if this split is going to occur. But I don't have a strong opinion on actual name choices. The names I used in Colombia were from the 2016 del Hoyo & Collar Checklist of Birds of the World, which, of course, Lynx urged. . . but these are really just placeholders.

“Somebody mentioned Northern Plain Xenops, and Amazonian Plain Xenops. This sounds fine to me. [do we need a hyphen in this group name?]

“I would certainly advocate using "Plain Xenops" as a group name for however many splits are being proposed or are likely in the future in this group) and then preface the group name with a modifier.”