Handbook of the Birds of the World, Special Volume: New Species and Global Index

When Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) started, Volume 16 was to have been the last volume of this magnificent series. But as the series was getting close to finishing, the editors decided to provide an additional Special Volume for three main reasons – to provide an overview of how avian systematics has developed over the 20-year lifetime of the HBW project, to provide species accounts for those new bird species described subsequent to publication of their respective volumes, and to provide an overall index to the entire series. What HBW has produced, however (and despite the fact that the Global Index runs to 310 pages), is something much more than this and, perhaps unexpectedly, an altogether wonderfully illustrated and fascinating book to end the series.

Handbook of the Birds of the World, Special Volume: New Species and Global Index starts with a Foreword on “The world’s largest civil society Partnership for Nature”, an informative chapter by Nick Langley on the history and other important aspects of the BirdLife International organization, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of the BirdLife Partnership and the 90th anniversary of its predecessor, the International Council for Bird Preservation. The essay charts the development and outlines some of the major programmes and achievements of this organisation from its very modest beginnings as ICBP, to its present-day partnership with national representatives in 116 countries and territories, and activities and influences on a planetary scale. In total, there are now around ten million personal members and supporters of the BirdLife Partnership – sufficient to have considerable influence on government policy-making in some countries. This Partnership coordinates and implements an impressive, diverse global programme of targeted research and conservation action, such as: single-species conservation initiatives; a Global Seabird Programme, aimed at reducing seabird bycatch across the world’s major fisheries; the identification of the world’s Important Bird Areas; and a much lesser-known, but hugely important and pioneering, project to restore a forest logging concession in Sumatra.

Following the Foreword on BirdLife International, Jon Fjeldså has contributed two chapters, the first being a 70-page essay entitled Avian classification in flux, followed by a 39-page treatise on The discovery of new bird species. Both of these chapters make fascinating reading (though you will need to set aside a whole day!) and are beautifully illustrated with photos, paintings, and diagrams. The first of these essays provides a comprehensive introduction to the changes in avian macrosystematics over the past two decades. During this period, many relationships have been significantly revised, most often on the basis of results provided by improved molecular techniques. These are particularly useful and informative at higher taxonomic levels – Fjeldså elegantly describes, for example, how molecular data revealed that “flycatchers” and “warblers” etc. are functional assemblages of species that contain groupings of species with different evolutionary origins despite their appearance of being related.

Large numbers of very well-preserved fossil terrestrial birds have been found and described the last two decades, and Fjeldså describes how study of these new fossils, and not just the advent of sophisticated genetic analyses, has led to revolutionary thinking about the evolution, origins, and relationships of many of the birds we know today. The review could not leave out an account of ancestral birds but, as might be anticipated, the bulk of this essay describes our present understanding of the relationships amongst modern, extant birds. This chapter is packed with succinct sections on species and groups of birds for which recent research have led to changes in our understanding of their taxonomic relationships, and there is so much information in this chapter that it is only possible to hint at its contents here. For example, it is here that we can read about how the Broad-billed Sapayoa Sapayoa aenigma has been shown to be the only (known) representative of the Old World Suboscine passerines found in the New World; how flamingos are most closely related to grebes; that the flycatcher-shrikes and woodshrikes (genera Hemipus and Tephrodornis) of Asia are related to the helmet-shrikes (Prionopidae) and vangas (Vangidae) of Africa and Madagascar rather than to the cuckoo-shrikes (Campephagidae) to which they have traditionally been associated; how the Pteruthius shrike-babblers of the Oriental region are in fact vireos (Vireonidae), and how our understanding of the relationships of birds traditionally treated as white-eyes, babblers, and Old World warblers have been completely revised in the last decade.

The second of Fjeldså’s essays is an engaging account of the continuing discovery of species new to science. It analyses in depth the how, why, and where of many of these discoveries, as well as providing a useful overview. After the mid-1900s, a period of intensive collection and description of new birds, ornithologists thought that the period of discovery was nearing its end and, in 1946, Ernst Mayr doubted that there would be more than 100 undescribed bird species. At that time there was an average of about three new species being described per year. Surprisingly, to Mayr at least, more than 350 new bird species have been described since 1946, and the rate of discovery of new species has steadily increased during the last 75 years and now seems fairly stable at 5-7 species per year, leaving aside all the splits that are continually being proposed.

Fjeldså speculates that there may still be a further 100 “new” species awaiting discovery, not to mention a couple of thousand splits based on our increasingly good understanding of evolutionary and ecological relationships. Of course, one has to wonder if Fjeldså has fallen into the same trap as Mayr did in his “100 new species” guess, but only time will tell. Following an analysis of where new birds are being discovered, Fjeldså goes on to note that one should not expect any hitherto unknown bird species to exist in the northern biomes, nor in arid inland regions. Remarkably, therefore, a completely new owl was found in the desert of Oman in 2013, and has just been described as Strix omanensis (Robb et al 2013). In the final part of his essay, Fjeldså outlines the localities and habitats he thinks are the most likely to harbour new bird species, as well as guessing what kinds of new bird species we can expect to be found.

The species described during the 20 years since the first HBW went to press comprise one kiwi, ten tube-nosed seabirds, three raptors, two wildfowl, four rails, a snipe, seven parrots, 15 owls, three nightjars, five hummingbirds, one hornbill, two barbets, 46 suboscine passerines, and at least 43 oscine passerines (songbirds). Most of these, being passerines, were described in time for inclusion in the relevant volumes of HBW, but 69 new species were not discovered in time and are now included in the New bird species accounts in the present Special Volume. Eleven of these are owls and nightjars, eight are tube-nosed seabirds, seven are parrots, five are hummingbirds, five are Scytalopus tapaculos, and four are rails. It should be noted, however, that the chapter on New bird species deals only with newly described species, and does not include those species that have arisen through the process of splitting, since these would have been covered (in most cases) as subspecies in previous volumes of the HBW series. One exception here is the inclusion of cryptic species that have recently been revealed but that were not previously recognized taxonomically – for example Varzea Thrush Turdus sanchezorum. In contrast to previous volumes, the illustrations of the newly described species are embedded in the text with the species accounts rather than shown on whole-page plates.

The Special Volume is special in another unanticipated way – it includes reviewed scientific papers that formally describe fifteen new species of Amazonian birds from Brazil. This is highly unusual, since new species are typically described in journals, but what better place to describe these species than in a volume of HBW that’s prime purpose is to include new species to science that had not been included in the 16-volume series. This section, introduced with an enlightening but rather technical essay by Bret Whitney and Mario Cohn-Haft, has descriptions of a puffbird, four woodcreepers, four antwrens, one antbird, three tyrant flycatchers, one gnatcatcher, and one jay that are new to science. Some readers may well struggle to understand parts of the essay by Whitney and Cohn-Haft, but much of the terminology is explained in the boxes in the first of the chapters by Fjeldså.

The centre of the Special Volume contains the most astounding collection of bird photos I have ever seen – here simply called the HBW photo gallery. These photos were judged to be the very best of 10,754 photos that were submitted to the HBW World Bird Photo Contest 2012. Many of these photos have to be seen to be believed; some are outstanding as pieces of art, rather than just photographs of birds doing something unusual. My favourites include a European Roller Coracias garrulous trying to catch a rodent, European Goldfinches Carduelis carduelis taking flight and two male Golden Pheasants Chrysolophus pictus facing off over a female, but all of the photos are stunning. It should be noted, however, that some of these photos would probably be deemed illegal in a country like the UK because of the proximity to nests and the potential disturbance that that causes. Certainly in Southeast Asia, where I live, there have been several recent instances of over-zealous bird photographers getting too close to nesting birds and taking thousands of flash photographs of individual birds at or near their nests. This is something of growing concern, and perhaps the photographic editors of HBW Alive and Lynx Edicion’s Internet Bird Collection should lay down and try to enforce clear rules about the conditions under which they will accept new photos, perhaps even banning those photographers who are known to disturb birds at or near their nests.

The last part of the Special Volume is a Global Index to the entire series which is designed to enable readers rapidly to find what they are looking for in the 16 HBW Volumes. The index can be searched by scientific name, or by common names in English, French, German, and Spanish. In addition, the inside covers of this volume contain a pictorial index to all the families that indicates which volume to consult to find the text on a particular family or species.

Publication of this Special Volume of HBW, marks the end to what is the only comprehensive encyclopedia to the world’s birds, but it is not the last word. Our knowledge of bird taxonomy, distribution, and behaviour is constantly improving, and new species are still being described. Since publication of the Special Volume, just in the Oriental region, several new species have been discovered or described, including Cambodian Tailorbird Orthotomus chaktomuk which can be found just outside Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital city (Mahood et al. 2013); the Sierra Madre Ground-warbler Robsonius thompsoni, discovered in the mountains of Luzon, Philippines (Hosner et al. 2013), and in Indonesia there are several novel species awaiting formal description, including a parrotfinch (a photograph of which can be seen here), a warbler, and an owl.

To deal with these discoveries and our ever expanding knowledge, Lynx Edicions has now launched HBW Alive. Subscription to this website will provide the user with the content of the 17-volume HBW series, consisting of around 15 million words, 20,617 bird figures, 10,200 maps, and around 100,000 bibliographical references. In addition, thousands of videos, photographs, and sounds are conveniently linked to HBW Alive for quick and easy access. The HBW Alive texts will be continuously updated by a team of ornithologists, so that when new species, taxonomic relationships, or aspects of behaviour or distribution are discovered, the text of HBW Alive will be changed to reflect this. The taxonomy followed will be that of the forthcoming HBW and BirdLife International Checklist of the Birds of the World. This is surely a fantastic resource for any keen birder, especially since the format can be customised to meet personal needs and interests, with the possibility of geographical filtering and inclusion of personal notes.

– Reviewed by Frank Lambert

References

Mahood, S. P., John, A. J. I., Eames, J. C., Oliveros, C. H., Moyle, R. G. , Hong Chamnan, Poole, C. M., Nielsen, H. & Sheldon, F. H. 2013. A new species of lowland tailorbird (Passeriformes: Cisticolidae: Orthotomus) from the Mekong floodplain of Cambodia 2013. Forktail 29:1-14.

Hosner, P.A., Boggess, N.C, Alviola, P., Sánchez-gonzález, L.A, Carl H. Oliveros, C.H., Urriza, R. and Moyle, R. G. 2013. Phylogeography of the Robsonius ground-warblers (Passeriformes: Locustellidae) reveals an undescribed species from northeastern Luzon, Philippines. The Condor 115 (3): 630-639.

Robb, M.S., van den Berg, A.B & Constantine, M. A new species of Strix owl from Oman. 2013. Dutch Birding 35: 275-310.