Distribution information for Tiaris

[John Grehan]

I have now received the source information from one of the
authors as J. Bond: Birds of the West Indies, 5th ed., Harper Collins,
London 1993.

John Grehan

At 05:21 PM 3/14/01 -0500, you wrote:
>If there are any bird people on the list who may be able to
>assist me to clarify the distribution of the genus Tiaris (grassquits)
>I would be most grateful.
>
>In the paper "On the origin of Darwin's finches" (Molecular Biology and
>Evolution
>18(3): 299-311, 2001) the authors refer to the biogeography of most of the
>extant Tiaris species being centered on the Caribbean islands. They cite
>Ridgely and Tudor (1989) as the source, but their book only refers to the
>four species found on the South American mainland T. fuliginosa, T. bicolor,
>T. obscura, T. olivacea).
>
>Looking up other checklists I find Sibly and Monroe (1990) reference to
>only three
>species in the Caribbean, two of which are also in South America (only T.
>canora
>endemic to the Caribbean). Brown's (1980) book "A complete checklist of the
>birds of the world" divides T. bicolor into eight subspecies that would
>increase
>the taxonomic diversity of Caribbean representation if they were ascribed
>species rank but this does not appear to be the case in later publications.
>
>Any enlightenment on the current status of the taxonomy and also any
>publications illustrating the distributions of Tiaris in the Caribbean
>would be
>most helpful.
>
>John Grehan
>
>