Proposal (515) to South American Classification Committee
Remove hyphens from
certain English names that do not represent monophyletic groups:
“Black-Hawk"
AOU policy is that
hyphenation of group names indicates that the group is monophyletic. See proposals 401 and 402, for example for background.
In his comments on
402, Alvaro asked whether we should just do this automatically when new data
refute the monophyly of a hyphenated group, and I personally would like to go
that route so that I don’t have to waste time on proposals like this one. However, I one could make a case that each
instance might differ, and so here we go with a couple of additional examples.
By accepting the
classification of Raposo do Amaral et al. (2009) (SACC proposal 492), we accept that “Common Black-Hawk”
and “Great Black-Hawk” do not form a monophyletic group within Buteogallus. Therefore, the hyphen, now misleading, should
be removed.
Van Remsen, February 2012
Comments from Jaramillo:
“YES – Confirming that this is a good idea and we should do this automatically
in the future.”
Comments from Stiles:
“YES. Seems a good way to indicate that
these species are not sisters, as the name with a hyphen implies.”