Conix, Stijn and Cuypers, Vincent and Pence, Charles H. (2024) Measuring and Explaining Disagreement in Bird Taxonomy. European Journal of Taxonomy, 943 (1). pp. 288-307.
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Abstract
Species lists play an important role in biology and practical domains like conservation, legislation, biosecurity and trade regulation. However, their effective use by non-specialist scientific and societal users is sometimes hindered by disagreements between competing lists. While it is well-known that such disagreements exist, it remains unclear how prevalent they are, what their nature is, and what causes them. In this study, we argue that these questions should be investigated using methods based on taxon concept rather than methods based on Linnaean names, and use such a concept-based method to quantify disagreement about bird classification and investigate its relation to research effort. We found that there was disagreement about 38% of all groups of birds recognized as a species, more than three times as much as indicated by previous measures. Disagreement about the delimitation of bird groups was the most common kind of conflict, outnumbering disagreement about nomenclature and disagreement about rank. While high levels of conflict about rank were associated with lower levels of research effort, this was not the case for conflict about the delimitation of bird groups. This suggests that taxonomic disagreement cannot be resolved simply by increasing research effort.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||||||||
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| Keywords: | taxonomic disagreement, taxonomic disorder, species lists, bird lists, taxonomic conflict | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation Specific Sciences > Biology > Systematics |
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| Depositing User: | Charles H. Pence | ||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2024 10:02 | ||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 20 Jul 2024 10:02 | ||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 23714 | ||||||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | European Journal of Taxonomy | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle | ||||||||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.5852/ejt.2024.943.2601 | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation Specific Sciences > Biology > Systematics |
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| Date: | 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 288-307 | ||||||||||||
| Volume: | 943 | ||||||||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23714 |
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