Kenya, 2012: Coke Smith, 10 days & 42 species including Desert Warthogs and Greater (Marsh) Cane Rat.
Jon
Kenya, 2012: Coke Smith, 10 days & 42 species including Desert Warthogs and Greater (Marsh) Cane Rat.
Jon
Hi everyone, Finally, I managed to complete my Uganda trip report: Uganda Jan21-updated Holy shit it’s long – But...
A spectacular bit of home video of a Leopard having a go at a Lechwe in Botswana. Jon
Here’s a few recent articles that caught my eye. Golden Cats have had a good deal of publicity the...
Hi, Will Duckworth from the IUCN’s small carnivore group got in touch to see what we all know about...
Hi, just a little info people might find interesting/useful. I just got back from 3 nights/4 days in North...
South Africa, 2016: Richard Webb (Wildwings), 11 days & 54 species including Smith’s Red Rock Hare, Cape Clawless and Spotted-necked Otters, Black-footed...
Are lions better off in fenced reserves than roaming free? A birder’s report of watching a green mamba encounter...
A few recent stories that caught my eye. I was expecting some sort of online tool to identify birds...
Genetically Welsh, spiritually Australian, currently in New York City. I've also lived and worked in London, Canberra, Paris and Lusaka, and visited over 100 countries. There's more here.
Great report!
I saw warthogs in shaba and samburu and thought they were desert, but wasn’t quite shure. Is grant’s gazelle split as a species or ssp? I saw a genet at the mountain lodge at mount Kenya (giant hog, suni, tree hyrax were easy here), do you know for shure wether they are blotched or common? i thought blotched…Thanks for the bat ID at shaba. I think i saw yellow-winged bat there to.
Some comments on your bird photo’s: Imperial eagle is a juv martial eagle
Kenrick’s starling is a sooty chat (kenrick’s starling is a difficult bird in the mount kenya region)
I saw a black morph ‘siver galago’ in the mara, do you know wether they are split from greater galago???
kind regards,
Arjan Dwarshuis, the Netherlands
Hhhmm..won’t let me reply below
Anyway, while I disagree with the criticisms of PSC, I don’t disagree with the problem splits that the author’s the paper posted below comment on. Splitting any taxon should only occur when multiple lines of evidence (multiple genes, morphology, etc) are available. What’s more I would argue that having read the recent Grubb and Colin ungulate taxonomy treatise, I don’t even think they are practicing PSC. They are using the morphological species concept through and through, and in some cases actually ignore phylogeny when it disagrees with their conclusions (IIRC).
Arjan: a paper just came out arguing that most ungulate splits proposed in recent years (particularly by Groves and Grubb) have no scientific evidence to support them and should be ignored. So there is only one klipspringer, one Grant’s gazelle, and so on.
Do you have the citation for the paper? I would be interesting in reading it
Me too. Could you post it on here?
Zachos F. E. et al. Species inflation and taxonomic artefacts—A critical comment on recent trends in mammalian classification. Mammal. Biol. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2012.07.083
Thanks for the information on the debate on the taxonomy. I was a bit confused myself as the split seemed to be a bit dubious….And thanks for the bird corrections – got them just have not updated yet. All except the chat that is – thanks. Not sure about the galago split you asked about.