Tag Archives: Lynx Edicions

How many bird species are there???? that’s a kinda common question which keeps coming in birders’s mind….so I did a quick analysis to check out the numbers of various avian taxa across various Avian Taxonomy Checklists…

There are approximately 10,500 bird species in the world. This number varies by a few hundred birds, depending on which classification system you use. As with most animal groupings, species are being redefined and what was considered to be one species may be split into two or more species, and in other cases. two species may be combined into one species. This splits and groupings happen regularly. It has been proposed that increasing numbers of vertebrate species are largely owing to ‘taxonomic inflation’. According to this hypothesis, newly recognized species result from reinterpretations of species limits based on phylogenetic species concepts (PSCs) rather than from new discoveries.

The Avian Taxonomy Checklists which I quickly analyzed are:

• Gill, F & D Donsker (Eds). 2012. IOC World Bird Names (v 3.1). Available at http://www.worldbirdnames.org/ [Accessed April 30, 2012].
• Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, B.L. Sullivan, C. L. Wood, and D. Roberson. 2011. The Clements checklist of birds of the world: Version 6.6. 
• Sibley, C. G. and Monroe, B. L. (1990) Distribution and taxonomy of birds of the world. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.
• Sibley, C. G. and Monroe, B. L. (1993) A supplement to ‘Distribution and taxonomy of birds of the world’. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.
• Dickinson, E. C. (2003) The Howard and Moore complete checklist of the birds of the world. 3rd edition. London: Christopher Helm. (Update 2006).
• Taxonomy in Flux Checklist 2.80 (jboyd.net)
• Handbook of the Birds of the World, Lynx Edicions ( Volume 1 to 16)
• The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2011
• BirdLife International (2011) The BirdLife checklist of the birds of the world, with conservation status and taxonomic sources. Version 4.

Out of this 8 World Checklist of Birds three are having subspecies level taxonomy eg. IOC World Bird Names (v 3.1), Clements checklist of birds of the world and Howard and Moore complete checklist of the birds of the world.

Quick Ananlysis:

I also did tried to find the Unique Species and Subspecies Epithet occurring in all the above checklists.

Epithet means specific names in Zoological Nomenclature, which refers to the second part (the second name) or third part within the scientific name of a species or subspecies respectively. 

eg. In Kalij Pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos), the second part leucomelanos  means Species Epithet. Whereas In Western Himalayan Subspecies of Kalij Pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos hamiltoni) , the second part leucomelanos  means Species Epithet and third part hamiltoni is Subspecies Epithet.

Here are the list of Top 5 occurrences of Species and Subspecies Epithets.

Here is the quick rundown to Birdlife Checklist of the birds of the world with conservation status.

I’m currently analyzing Indian Birds Checklist in similar fashion…so keep watching this space for the updates……