Dear all,

Not a great title - sorry.  But I wonder whether others have noticed peculiarities in their lists when switching to the new Clements list, as I did yesterday.  It seemed that my life list was several species short and in at least some cases this appears to result from subspecies in the previous Clements list that are simply not recognized by the new list.

As an example, consider Bimaculated Lark (Melanocorypha bimaculata, I think).  I have seen this beast in Central Asia and in Israal (and probably elsewhere, although I can't remember at the moment) and in both cases the birds were easily identifiable to subspecies.  At the time I was using the 2005 version of Clements and so I entered the subspecies I saw.  When I run off my life list using Clements 2005 (not showing subspecies), Bimaculated Lark is nicely ticked.  All well and good.

But this is not the case when I run off the list using Clements 2008.  The sightings are still there, of course, but there doesn't seem to be a connection between the "Thing" that was a Bimaculated Lark subspecies in Clements 2005 and the name "Bimaculated Lark" in the new Clements list, which treats Bimaculated Lark as monotypic (presumably following HBW:  someone has determined that the variation is clinal although extremes of the races are easily separable in the field).  As a result, Bimaculated Lark is not ticked.

It would obviously be little trouble for me to edit all my BM sightings to "remove" the allocation of subspecies and I guess I could do this for other subspecies that are no longer valid in the new list but surely there must be an easier way?  It would be nice if the new list "knew" that all sightings previously allocated as BM subspecies were to be treated as Bimaculated Lark under the 2008 Clements taxonomy...

Has anybody else noticed problems of this kind?

Best wishes,

Graham

Thanks much and very sorry that this is not cleaner. It is a difficult problem to solve.

I have added this scenario to my notes on this design.

Thanks,

Jeff

Dear Steve, dear Jeff,

Thanks for your comments, I think I understand better what the problem is and how it may one day be solved.

There is a logical difference between splits and lumps and I think they should be handled differently by upgrades.  With a split, it is clearly difficult for anything to be done without human input:  splits often "cost" me species because my notes are insufficient to work out which of the new species I saw when they're not separable by range so the programme can do nothing here (as an aside, I wonder how I should edit such sightings, when I no longer know what bird I saw although I identified it at the time - this question will turn out not to be as daft as it sounds if the Red Crossbill is ever split into all sorts of different forms) but a lump is a different matter:  two "Things" that were different in one list (Clements 2005) become the same in the new list (Clements 2008).  I don't think species lumps should be too difficult to process automatically. 

My problem is at a somewhat different level.  It is easy enough to find a list of species that have been lumped and split in Clements 2008 as opposed to Clements 2005 (I shan't advertise your competition here!) but this doesn't include species where there have been significant revision to the subspecies.  The only way I can think of to examine where this has happened - Bimaculated Lark is an example I noticed by chance - is to compare the two lists manually, which at over 30,000 entries each would keep me busy for quite a few rainy days.

By the way, my real hope in ploughing through all my records with HBW and various monographs on my lap in an attempt to allocate subspecies to individual sightings was that future lumps and splits would be more easily handled.  If I had recorded three different subspecies of a particular lark that were deemed in the future to represent good species, I thought the programme would automatically assign them correctly.  It now seems as though each update has to be done manually in any case.  Or am I missing something ( as usual)?

Best wishes,

Graham

Hello Graham,

1. Yes - splits will always require user intervention at some level unless you recorded your sightings at the ssp. level.
2. Lumps are easy. Nothing for you to do. Diary maintains your sightings at the subspecific level.
3. In the case of the Lark, we need a utility in Diary which will show the differences between the two (old and new) tax lists and quickly allow you to step through each difference to see if it applies to you. Look for this in v3.7.
4. Regarding your last paragraph, Diary already does this for you. And quite well. If you had recorded 3 different ssps that were deemed in the future to represend good species, then nothing for you to do. Diary will correctly manage them. The Lark example above is not this scenario however.

Let me know if any of this is not clear. And I will elaborate.

Jeff

Hello Graham,

Attached is an informal list of the changes between 2005 and 2008 tax lists. This should help you.

Jeff

Ok - I am attempting (short of a proper Tax Wizard) to give you shorter, more concise information to help you with any splits/lumps or issues such as the Lark above.

Attached is a ZIP file with the following:

1. List of things in Clements 2008 not in Clements 2005 - 109 things
2. List of things in Clements 2005 not in Clements 2008 (this will show the Lark) - 173 things

In addition, (SteveO is currently verifying this) there is only one thing elevated to genus-level status (e.g. Split). This requires you to examing all of your sightings for this thing and attempt to assign them to one or other of the new species. This thing is the Blue Grouse.

This should give you a bit more information.

List #2 above is really the only thing that requires your attention (e.g. Bimaculated Lark). If you have sightings for anything in list #2, then you will need to take action and assign them to something in Clements 2008. Maybe Steve has a list of which thing(s) list #2 should be assigned to.

fyi

Jeff