It All Started with the Boobies

Well, it may be a stretch to call it misunderstood, but…

Brown morph red-footed boobie,
originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

Tammy and I recently gave Johann his own Flickr account. He’s been wanting one for a while and now that he is taking pictures regularly with me, there was a new reason to consider it. At the same time we are encouraging his use of Flickr as an opportunity to learn, as we do in most things. One thing is that I have taken to making a detective/research game out of each of his requests to add someone as a contact. (almost all are from my own contacts so I am familiar with their work). For Flickr member Aleutian Fox I gave Johann 9 short answer questions about the Aleutian Islands which ranged from fairly easy (What European Nation first settled and claimed the islands) to reasonably hard (how were the islands formed). Encouraging him to continue to use books and cite sources, he also had to use only books for the answers and provide me a list of the books. Once he answered all the questions he could add Aleutian Fox as his contact.

I took off to my evening class after giving him the list and the plan that he and Tammy would visit the library tomorrow. By the time I got home from class he had only two questions left, and he was working on those! Within another 15 minutes he had them all done. All of the answers had come from books in our own private library, three of my books (The Sea Floor, Whales, Whaling and the Ocean Ecosystem, and An Introduction to the World’s Oceans) and two of his own (How People Live and Our Country’s Presidents). So much for going to the town library.

GANSO PATOLA, originally uploaded by sparkyfaisca.

The next Flickr Challenge was Sparky Faisca. I wanted Johann to grab 5 pictures from his stream that represent 5 different orders within the class Aves and provide the complete classification for each (Sparky provides common name and species). Pretty easy, except Johann discovered a problem. Sparky has some wonderful images of a Northern Gannet. He listed the scientific name as Sula bassana, and one of Johann’s books, Smithsonian Institution: Animal, had it as Morus bassana. Johann pointed this genus confusion out to me, so I showed him how to use the ITIS website to verify the current classification. Problem solved!

Ooops! ITIS reports both as being confirmed valid species names. There seems to be a bit of confusion or misunderstanding there…

Ok. The Gannets and Boobies together make up the Sulidae. I remember that much from my trip to Belize… Why? Because for organized conservation in Belize it all began with the boobies. Sula is the genus of the boobies such as the Red-footed boobie Sula sula while Morus is the genus of the Gannets such as the Australasian gannet Morus serrator, and Papasula is the genus for Abbot’s boobie Papasula abbotti which appears to be much older branch than the Sula and may be intermediate to the gannet and boobie genus’. So why is the Northern Gannet in both Morus and Sula at ITIS? For that matter why is the Abbot’s Boobie in both Papasula and Sula?

Northern Gannet in Flight ©Jim Heupel

Johann suggested that the Northern Gannet, being a true gannet, must be in genus Morus with the other true gannets. I had to concur. Just before bed Johann sent me the following classification for the Northern Gannet: