Talk:Gygis candida

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Contradiction

This article and Little white tern are seriously mixed-up and need to be disentangled. For one thing, Gygis alba still lists candida as a subspecies, so there is another contradiction here. And the "little white tern" is only G.microrhyncha, with G.candida (if it is considered a separate species) being variously known as Common, Indo-Pacific or Pacific White Tern (and G.alba sensu stricto being the Atlantic White Tern).

As it seems, erroneous application of the vernacular name "little white tern" to G.candida has caused the conflict at hand. G.candida cannot be the "little" WT - if anything, it would be the "Great" or "Greater" WT, because the "little" WT was the first species to be split from G.alba, and more precisely from the Pacific group thereof - that is G. alba candida. So, G. (a.) candida is actually the "not-little" white tern.

Essentially, Gygis and all three species-level articles (White tern, Little white tern, Gygis candida) need a complete and coordinated overhaul to straighten this out. Even whether Gygis candia can be kept as article title is doubtful - if we do this, we need to list it accordingly on the genus page (where it presently does not appear at all), references supporting the split and all. But it should probably be moved to Gygis alba candida given that only microrhyncha is generally accepted as distinct species nowadays. To add to the confusion, when candida is included as subspecies in alba, "Common White Tern" refers to Gygis alba as a whole. So it is really the "Atlantic/Pacific" names that are the only appropriate ones, and all common-name redirects need to be checked too. Oh, and white tern should really redirect to Gygis, because this is the pre-split vernacular name.

Essentially, the following possibilities exist:

one species (alba - WT): generally considered obsolete today
two species (alba - Common WT; microrhyncha - Little WT): probably the most common scheme today
three species (alba - Atlantic WT; candida - Indo-Pacific WT; microrhyncha - Little WT): used by some recent authors, but more often considered oversplitting

The articles presently mix them up wildly (except 'Gygis which is the briefest of stubs and uses the 2-species scheme). Dysmorodrepanis2 (talk) 11:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Gygis candida

Contradiction

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