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Posted by John Boyd on 21:55:42 06/07/07
In Reply to: Re: County List posted by Bill Pranty
That the taxonomic issue played a role is James Rising's recollection (Birdchat Nov 2001). The relevant papers hadn't been published, but the work was apparently somewhat known.
Kevin Burns 1997 paper in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (doi:10.1006/mpev.1997.0430) already gave a strong hint that Spindalis was not a tanager. In fact, it is clear from Burns once you realize the Piranga are not tanagers either.
As for spindalis as an English name, it has long been common practice to use the scientific genus name as if it were an English name. That happened here. Bond later sensibly replaced it with a good descriptive English name.
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