Use of AOU checklist

[Steve Halford]

On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Leonard Krishtalka wrote:

>        A working group of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation,
> NAFTA, is considering a biodiversity project that will entail the electronic
> assembly, integration and dissemination of occurrence data forf North
> American birds from existing specimen-based and observation-based databases.
>
>         One of the component tasks is to identify a taxonomic authority for
> bird names.  Would this be the 1983 AOU checklist (6th edition)?  Are there
> other authority files that ornithologists commonly use?  Please advise and
> thank you in advance for your help.
>
Since you don't seem to have been overwhelmed by repies from *real*
ornithologists:

The AOU checklist would seem to be the logical taxonomic authority,  but
is subject to biennial revisions published in the October(?) issue of
"The Auk" in every odd-numberd year.  Thus there have been six revisions to
the sixth edition to date,  and I believe a seventh edition is scheduled
for publication this year.

Steve (halford at sfu.ca)
Museum Technician
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada