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 be 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: "YES.
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 sometime 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."