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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Bird Sci.
Sec. Bird Ecology and Behavior
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbirs.2024.1363995
This article is part of the Research Topic Cryptic Diversity Within Bird Species Revealed by Call Types View all 4 articles

Detection and identification of a cryptic Red Crossbill call type in northeastern North America

Provisionally accepted
Matthew Young Matthew Young 1*Matthew Young Matthew Young 1Ken Mcenaney Ken Mcenaney 1Tessa Rhinehart Tessa Rhinehart 2Stefan Kahl Stefan Kahl 3Nicholas M. Anich Nicholas M. Anich 4Ryan Brady Ryan Brady 4David Yeany David Yeany 5Ryan Mandelbaum Ryan Mandelbaum 1
  • 1 Finch Research Network, Ithaca, New York, United States
  • 2 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 3 Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States
  • 4 Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Ashland, Wisconsin, United States
  • 5 Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program , Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) are the archetypal example of a taxon with high infraspecific diversity in traits including bill size and especially vocal characteristics. Currently, at least 11 different call types in North America have been recognized. Here, we demonstrate a twelfth type should be recognized. Type 12, we hypothesize, was previously overlooked as a variant call within type 10. We show with principal components analysis that the inverted “V” of Type 12 calls are consistently and demonstrably different from similar calls of birds previously categorized as Type 10 variants. Due to increasingly available recordings of crossbills gathered and archived into public databases by birders, our analyses reveal that this call type is predominantly distributed across northeastern North America. Although crossbill types do not always map to formerly described subspecies, we also argue that Type 12 likely matches the historically described L. c. neogaea, the “old Northeastern subspecies”. We argue Type 12 should be treated separately as a distinct type.

    Keywords: Crossbill, finch, machine learning, cryptic species, Conifer

    Received: 31 Dec 2023; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Young, Young, Mcenaney, Rhinehart, Kahl, Anich, Brady, Yeany and Mandelbaum. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Matthew Young, Finch Research Network, Ithaca, New York, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.