We have come to accept that evolutionary change and the process of speciation in birds can be rapid. But nothing has prepared ornithologists for the possible doubling of recognized bird species now being advocated by some taxonomists and aired at a meeting last month. A world list of 20,000 species, as opposed to the current 10,000, has become a very real prospect as the techniques of DNA analysis threaten to displace field notebooks as the main tool of avian taxonomy.
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