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The Factious, High-Drama World of Bird Taxonomy
- cathartes 10y agoAvian taxonomists covering the "tropics" of Central/South America have it bad, as do those in southeast Asia. These are areas where the quantity and diversity of species is awesomely mind-numbing, helped not one wit by subtleties in variety that thoroughly push the biological species concept to its limits. I don't envy these poor souls, ... but as a clarification, the American Ornithological Society didn't technically exist until the end of 2016--when the American Ornithologists' Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society formalized their merger--so the author would have been more correct to name the American Ornithologists' Union, the organization that existed during the cited timeframe.
- elastic_church 10y ago> Some ornithologists have very strong feelings about hyphens. Does this article ironically use as many hyphens as possible for comic relief?
- pzone 10y agoHonestly this argument doesn't impress me enough to call it "high-drama." The dispute about hyphens was a bit silly, but otherwise the conflict seems par for the course being an academic field.