Per Alström

YouTube video by Delta Birding Festival AviList: a unified global bird checklist - Per Alström

I was honoured to be invited to give a talk on AviList, the new unified global checklist of birds, at the Delta Birding Festival 2+ weeks ago, and the organizers just sent me a link to a YouTube video of my talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO5x... #birds #ornithology #taxonomy

Just published: Conservation genomics of two
endangered buntings reveal genetic diversity
before and after severe population declines. doi.org/10.1186/s129... Despite severe population declines, both species retained high genetic diversity but experienced increased inbreeding. #ornithology #birds

eBird Checklist - 21 Sep 2025 - Delta de l'Ebre--Pelàgica Golf de St. Jordi - 24 species (+1 other taxa) Submitted by Per Alström.

As part of the Delta Bird Festival, I participated on a boat trip, where we saw a staggering c. 250 European Storm Petrels and lots of other birds and some Bottle-nosed Dolphins: ebird.org/checklist/S2... #birds #ornithology

El búho chico, la melena de Sargatal y el trino de la cantante pajarera de Tennessee El XI Delta Birding Festival cierra con 4.500 visitantes, cifra récord de la cita ornitológica de las tierras del Ebro

The large newspaper El País published a paper on the Delta Bird Festival:
elpais.com/espana/catal...
(where a photo of me looks like I'm asleep😀). Kudos to singer-songwriter Bonner Black (www.bonnerblack.com) for sharing her interest in birding with her many fans! #birds #ornithology

Home AviList is a collaborative global effort to produce a single current consensus taxonomy for the birds of the world, along with key information on taxonomy and nomenclature. The checklist is free for d...

I'm too inexperienced w Bluesky to know whether my comment on Delta Bird Festival, where I gave a talk on AviList (avilist.org), the unified global list of birds, is visible, so here's a link to paper where we present the work behind and future of AviList: doi.org/10.1007/s105... #birds #ornithology

AviList: a unified global bird checklist - Biodiversity and Conservation Universally recognized scientific names for organisms are necessary for accurate and efficient communication. Incongruence in taxonomic treatments results in situations where one name is used for different entities or one entity is known by different names, with negative consequences for conservation, science, trade, legislation, law enforcement, and education, leading to discord among stakeholders and confusion among users. Within the ornithological community taxonomic incongruence among four widely adopted global bird checklists has led to calls for the development of a single unified global avian taxonomy or checklist. Here we introduce AviList, a comprehensive, collaborative and evolving effort towards developing a unified global avian taxonomy, spearheaded by representatives of most current global checklists and many major regional authorities, and supported by the International Ornithologists’ Union (IOU), BirdLife International and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. AviList version 2025, the first version, was officially launched on 11 June 2025 and is available online as a comprehensive, searchable public-access database. It recognizes 11,131 bird species in 2376 genera, 252 families and 46 orders. This global effort has resolved over 1000 species-level taxonomic incongruences among existing checklists. With AviList’s launch, the IOC World Bird List and the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World have ceased any independent taxonomic updates, while BirdLife International is in the process of total alignment, leading to a harmonization in the classification underpinning a number of major bird projects, including eBird, Macaulay Library, Merlin Bird ID and the IUCN Red List. Adoption of AviList will improve inter-operability across global biodiversity, molecular, ecological and spatial databases (e.g. GBIF). Strong governance of AviList will ensure it is a “living” document that is regularly updated by a global community of bird taxonomists as new scientific advances are made, with positive impacts for conservation, academia and human society. It is hoped that AviList will support and encourage taxonomic science by identifying areas where further research is most needed, and that it will provide a blueprint for taxonomic authorities in other organismic groups endeavoring to achieve taxonomic harmonization.

Many thx to organizers, most enjoyable event! My and others' talks will apparently be posted on YouTube soon. In meantime, check our paper on work behind and future of AviList: doi.org/10.1007/s105... (also available on ResearchGate). #birds #ornithology

📆 Saturday, September 20th, at Marquee 1, we’ll be joined by Prof. @peralstrom.bsky.social, ornithologist and former core member of the AviList team.

📔 He will present the new unified global bird taxonomy known as AviList, which aims to be the definitive tool for ornithological classification.

Home AviList is a collaborative global effort to produce a single current consensus taxonomy for the birds of the world, along with key information on taxonomy and nomenclature. The checklist is free for d...

I'm proud to be part of this project, which was launched today after several years of hard work by an international team – AviList, a unified list of the world's species of birds (11,131, including 151 extinct ones since 16th Century): www.avilist.org #birds #taxonomy

More from Somaliland: Probably first-ever video of Lesser Hoopoe-Lark – frustratingly with microphone switched off!... Luckily, several decent sound recordings separately + photos of different individuals. search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxo... #birds # ornithology @animecol-uu.bsky.social

Congratulations to all — especially my good friend Claire!

Thx!

More from my recent trip from Somaliland. Possibly first-ever video of Somali Lark (plus some photos and sound recordings): lnkd.in/dsFDW4s6 #birds #ornithology @animecol-uu.bsky.social

CONGRATULATIONS, Bridget Ogolowa, to an excellent thesis! Thanks, Alex Kirschel for inviting me and @borjamila.bsky.social to examine it, and for your great company. Some photos of birds on eBird: ebird.org/checklist/S2...
ebird.org/checklist/S2...

In India, folklore is a tool that helps women save the greater adjutant stork Come hear the hargila’s speech With a cry of the heart’s eyes Hear o hear me out Please do not chop down our trees Do not erase our forests How are we going to keep living How are we going to keep…

In India’s Assam, women have joined forces to save the resident greater adjutant stork which was long considered a “dirty, smelly bird” that villagers would attack.

The population rise linked to these efforts has caused them to be reclassified by the IUCN from endangered to near threatened.

A Forest Wagtail (Dendronanthus indicus 山鹡鸰 shānjílíng) on the patch today, doing its typical sideways tail-wagging. A local summer breeder and passage migrant in the capital. #birds #beijing

Repeatability of evolution and genomic predictions of temperature adaptation in seed beetles - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors compare genomic and phenotypic changes between genetic backgrounds of seed beetles evolved at hot or cold temperatures. Despite phenotypic changes being more rapid and predictable at hot t...

Finally out: Predicting adaptation to climate warming www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We find that there are many genomic routes to heat-adaptation, but this can also make genomic data of limited value for prediction. A tour de force by @denovorego.bsky.social , with @stelkens.bsky.social.

I was in Somaliland in late March/early April, primarily to study larks. Here's one of the ones I was extremely happy to see: probably first video and some of first sound recordings of this species: Collared Lark search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxo...

Are Snow Bunting and McKay’s Bunting different species? A genetic study explores the demographic history of these white passerines. The description of McKay’s Bunting (Plectrophenax hyperboreus) on Wikipedia reads: “This species closely rese…

Your daily Avian Hybrids story!

Are Snow Bunting and McKay’s Bunting different species?
buff.ly/UIKUc6M

#ornithology

Avian Research (www.sciencedirect.com/journal/avia...) is planning a Virtual Special Issue on “Asian Flyways under Global Change: Movement Ecology and Emerging Threats”. Read more here: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/...
Free, Open Access, ranked #4 in ornithology!
#ornithology #birds #ecology

Get more from Fågelpodden on Patreon creating Fågelpodden

Jag intervjuades nyligen av Fågelpodden om mitt liv som fågelskådare och fågelforskare. Hör två avsnitt som jag medverkar i här: patreon.com/fagelpodden #fåglar

eBird Checklist - 9 Mar 2025 - Sunnerstaviken - 18 species Submitted by Per Alström.

A short walk in Uppsala this morning produced, e.g. a Tawny Owl (kattuggla) in a tree hole and a drumming Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (mindre hackspett). See video of former and eBird report here: ebird.org/checklist/S2... #birds

🐺 Today, the Bern Convention's decision to weaken #wolf protection officially enters into force.

Wolves in Europe are still far from a favourable conservation status: this move threatens their fragile recovery instead of promoting true coexistence and listening to science.

#SavetheWolf

🔥Yesterday, along with Oxfam, WWF, Fern, BAN and T&E we gathered in front of the European Parliament to demand an end to public funding for harmful bioenergy.

Read our joint open letter "Beyond Bioenergy - A Civil Society Statement on EU Bioenergy policy" here: www.eubioenergy.com/wp-content/u...

Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows Researchers say data strengthens case for holding firms to account for their contribution to climate crisis

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Reviving the woolly mammoth isn’t just unethical. It’s impossible | Adam Rutherford At a time when US scientists are under attack from their own government, the illiteracy around these elephantine fantasies is dangerous, says geneticist Adam Rutherford

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science 48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science

We are one of 48 scientific society signatories on a letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists calling on Congress to take action to support federal research funding, and oppose cuts to workforces of federal science and funding agencies.
www.ucsusa.org/about/news/s...

HUGE CONGRATS to @axeljensen.bsky.social for a truly awesome PhD thesis and an excellent defense of the same (and a great party afterwards)! And thanks to @joanameier.bsky.social for an excellent "opposition"! And without supervisor @kguschan.bsky.social this thesis would never have happened!

I agree! I wish I could apply...

It was an excellent talk, Maria!

A century of theories of balancing selection Traits that affect organismal fitness are often very genetically variable. This genetic variation is vital for populations to adapt to their environments, but it is also surprising given that nature (...

Finally ready to see the world! Theories of balancing selection - past, present and future: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A true collaborative effort that brought together theoreticians and empiricists, models, data, and fresh perspectives on how balancing selection can shape genetic variation.