Historical patterns of avian taxonomy -- 3

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This plot again show taxa arrainged by year of description (Y-axis). They are grouped along the X-axis by the numbering system applied by Sibley & Monroe, and previously by the AOU.

This divides taxa into broad geographic groupings. These groupings are:

NA 	North America
MA 	Middle America
Parc	Palearctic
Ornt	Orient
ClVz	Columbia, Venezuela
SAm	South America (the remainder)
SAfr	Southern Africa
Afr	Africa (the remainder)
ANZ	Australia, New Zealand
PapNG	Papua, New Guinea

Several points are immediately apparent.

• The very strong concentration of Gould Australian Taxa. (It seems interesting that he described only one non-Southern African taxon). Linnaeus, in contrast, had almost no Australian taxa to describe.

• The very short period of extraordinary productivity by Vieillot.

• The concentration on NeoTropical forms by Sclater.

• The main period of Non-South African taxonomic activity is between about 1890 and 1910. Somewhat later than I would have guessed.

Clearly there are three rough groupings: Linnaeus; (Vieillot,Gould,Gmelin,Temminck,Sclater); and all the remainder.