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| | Family List 6th ed |
 | | Stability had been a goal when I began this project in 1999 [see my old essay on "choosing a family listing"], but since this is my 6th edition in 6 years, it is obvious that we are in an exciting time of rapid change in taxonomic ideas and evidence. |
 | | The purpose of this list of Bird Families of the World is as an aid to world birders who desire to maximize their study of avian diversity by observing examples of as many bird families as possible or reasonable within the time and money available for travel. |
 | | For example, they lumped together the New World warblers, tanagers, sparrows, icterids, flowerpiercers, Hawaiian honeycreepers, and others into a single family [Fringillidae] composed of 3 sub-families, 9 tribes, and 993 species, just because there preliminary statistics on the melting curves shown in their DNA-DNA hybridization studies were too low for their chosen "family" level. |
| www.montereybay.com /creagrus/list.html (5610 words) |
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