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Rating  Harris T and K Franklin 2000 Family book Shrikes

Summary: Rating  Harris T and K Franklin 2000 Family book Shrikes Bush Shrikes Princeton Univ Press Princeton N J This is a very attractive offering in the Princeton bird families series Tony Harris wrote the text Kim Franklin did the plates It has the familiar layout of plates altogether in the front with range maps and i d summary and detailed species accounts in the back It looks well researched and has a good bibliography I very much enjoyed the full page spreads with black and white sketch on each genus in the groups covered that highlights the introduction There is a lot of discussion of taxonomy but unfortunately the authors chose to follow the Sibley Monroe 1990 approach of only two families shrikes Laniidae and bush shrikes Malaconotidae All of the batises wattle eyes helmet shrikes and such things as flycatcher shrikes wood shrikes and philentomas are thrown into the latter family New research does not support this approach As it turns out the true shrikes are not the closest relatives to the rest of this set e g Barker et al 2004 so even the premise of this book proves false Further vangas not included in this book are closely related to the rest of the group Indeed it appears that the flycatcher shrikes are vangas and that helmet shrikes are very closely related to vangas The text also suffers from the author s use of the Species Recognation Concept as his definition for species fortunately in practice in works rather like the tried and true Biological Species Concept Yet both in its language and in its reliance on DNA hybridization evidence Sibley Ahlquist 1990 this book has the unfortunate status of being out of date taxonomically much more quickly than would be anticipated Bibliographic note    That having been said the species accounts maps and paintings for the species that are included all are very good This is a well written book with attractive paintings It is great to have a world overview of the species that are included even if they do not hang together as a group     One major annoyance citations in the text are small print superscript numbers A list of these numbers is in the back of the book but the list does not give the full citation Rather citation number 732 is Emlen 1979 One then has to go check the bibliography to locate the full citation to Emlen s note in Scopus on fiscal shrikes This is an entirely unnecessary double effort for the reader and should have been fixed by the publisher just number the bibliography if you use this tactic see Dickinson 2003 for an example of the proper way to do this Despite all these criticisms it IS a very attractive publication and quite useful in many ways So I give it 4 of 5 stars despite its limitations The basic underlying information about each taxa and the attractive plates make up for a lot Rating  Harris T and K Franklin 2000 Family book Shrikes Bush Shrikes Princeton Univ Press Princeton N J This is a very attractive offering in the Princeton bird families series Tony Harris wrote the text Kim Franklin did the plates It has the familiar layout of plates altogether in the front with range maps and i d summary and detailed species accounts in the back It looks well researched and has a good bibliography I very much enjoyed the full page spreads with black and white sketch on each genus in the groups covered that highlights the introduction There is a lot of discussion of taxonomy but unfortunately the authors chose to follow the Sibley Monroe 1990 approach of only two families shrikes Laniidae and bush shrikes Malaconotidae All of the batises wattle eyes helmet shrikes and such things as flycatcher shrikes wood shrikes and philentomas are thrown into the latter family New research does not support this approach As it turns out the true shrikes are not the closest relatives to the rest of this set e g Barker et al 2004 so even the premise of this book proves false Further vangas not included in this book are closely related to the rest of the group Indeed it appears that the flycatcher shrikes are vangas and that helmet shrikes are very closely related to vangas The text also suffers from the author s use of the Species Recognation Concept as his definition for species fortunately in practice in works rather like the tried and true Biological Species Concept Yet both in its language and in its reliance on DNA hybridization evidence Sibley Ahlquist 1990 this book has the unfortunate status of being out of date taxonomically much more quickly than would be anticipated Bibliographic note    That having been said the species accounts maps and paintings for the species that are included all are very good This is a well written book with attractive paintings It is great to have a world overview of the species that are included even if they do not hang together as a group     One major annoyance citations in the text are small print superscript numbers A list of these numbers is in the back of the book but the list does not give the full citation Rather citation number 732 is Emlen 1979 One then has to go check the bibliography to locate the full citation to Emlen s note in Scopus on fiscal shrikes This is an entirely unnecessary double effort for the reader and should have been fixed by the publisher just number the bibliography if you use this tactic see Dickinson 2003 for an example of the proper way to do this Despite all these criticisms it IS a very attractive publication and quite useful in many ways So I give it 4 of 5 stars despite its limitations The basic underlying information about each taxa and the attractive plates make up for a lot

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