White Faced Scops
White Faced Scops
After doing some more reading about our Owl of the Year, it seems that the name is becoming a bit outdated.
After genetic testing around 2010, it showed there was enough genetic diversity to split the species into 2 different ones, so now we have the Northern White Faced and (surprise surprise) the Southern White Faced Owl.
The difference is only slightly visual, with the Southern usually being a little darker and more streaky in pattern, but various birds are going to look different, and with different lighting in every photo, it's not that easy to pick them apart that way.
With genetic testing becoming cheaper, we're learning a lot about what we can't observe by other methods previously available. I tried reading a scientific paper about the original results of the testing of the White Faced Scops, and all I could make is it was the % variation of their results between the 2 groups of samples was enough to recommend the species be split. It seemed very interesting how they analyze these things, so I'll have to learn more about how people look at genetic diversity and genetic distance so I can read deeper into these things.
Northern
Southern
I don't much see the difference, other than there different photos of different owls. Do you? 🤷♂️
One is cute. The other is also cute?
One is 5% more adorable, the other is 5% more charming.
And neither is a fugly duck!
The Northern is chill and the southern is alert. Maybe they just differ in their traits. /s
Considering researchers only discovered differences between them, when looking very, very closely, the differences found may be hard to spot anyway.
I wish I could have understood the paper better. It has a chart showing percentages of diversity between species of the same genus, but it was both too complicated for my brain's current level at understanding geneticists, plus the image also got too blurry before I could zoom enough to read it. ☺️
I'll have to learn more. All the science is really amazing.
To me it looks like there may be a slight variation in eye colour with the Northern's being slightly more red. That could be chalked up to lighting though.
This is why I just read the caption! If it doesn't say, I don't post it. 😜