Talk:Tern

Mistake in the Cladogram

How do you fix it? The Cladogram states that a tyrant flycatcher (onychorhynchus) is a member of the tern family. I think it should be Onychoprion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.204.140 (talk) 13:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Untitled

According to HANZAB, "large terns with erectile crests (e.g. S. bergii, S. bengalensis) sometimes placed in Thalasseus." HANZAB lists them under Sterna. Tannin 07:37 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Lynx HBW accepts Thalasseus; I've added that and the other segregate genera they accept in brackets. - MPF

Duplicate Article?

Is this article about the same bird?

no - this article is about the tern family, River Tern is a particular species, jimfbleak 15:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

ah, fair enough, just wondering :)

etymology

Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, and the OED all say "tern" is from Scandinavian words related to modern Danish terne, etc., and etymonline agrees and adds that Old English stearn meant "starling". Is there some reason these etymologies aren't in the article—maybe a refutation in Hume or something? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 02:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

OED says Of Norse origin: compare Danish terne, Swedish tärna, Norwegian and Faroese terna < Old Norse þerna, the tern or sea swallow... Some consider tern to be related to stearn, stern, which occurs in Old English as a bird-name, and, in the form starn, is a name in E. Anglia of the Common and the Black Tern; it is mentioned by W. Turner Avium præcipuarum historia, 1544, as ‘nostrati lingua sterna appellata’, whence Linnæus took Sterna as a generic name. I'm going out shortly, I'll look tomorrow Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Jerry, does this work? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:33, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Jim! I changed it a bit to make it clear from the start that there's controversy and to add a probably source for Linnaeus's Sterna. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:34, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jerry, I've tweaked slightly. "According to some authorities" was repeated in consecutive sentences, which shouldn't really happen in FA prose. The first two sentences, regarding the facts of the usage in English, aren't a matter of controversy AFAIK (for example, you can download the text of The Seafarer and its translation to check that the word is used in that context). I don't know if the claimed derivation from Norse is controversial or not, I'll take your word for that, but since it's an opinion rather than a fact I've left the reference to the "authorities" there. Hope that makes sense. Your Linnaeus bit clarifies too Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:50, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my mistake. I misplaced the part saying what's controversial (having changed what I was going to say in midstream). There is a controversy, since "tern" can't be both from Anglo-Saxon stearn and from Norse words without an "s". I hope it's clearer now. I added Merriam-Webster to go with plural "authorities". I got the statement that Turner's "sterna" was a Latinization of "stern" by asking at the Reference Desk here. I thought it was interesting enough that Linnaeus's Sterna was probably Turner's Latinization that I added a quote with a sourced translation, but you may think that makes the etymology too complicated in a article that about a bird, not a word, so maybe something simpler would be better. (For further complication, Turner seems to have seen the Black Tern at Reedham, which goes nicely with "stern" in Norfolk dialect.) —JerryFriedman (Talk) 19:04, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me, Jerry. If you want to see the outcome of a really convoluted etymology, try |this, the outcome of days of discussion between me and Snowman. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:19, 11 January 2014 (UTC) Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Terns should be moved to the family Laridae

This article treats the terns as a separate family Sternidae. This followed Gochfeld and Burger in their 1996 article in the Handbook of Birds of the World. HBW alive has updated the taxonomy and now includes the terns in the family of Laridae - see here. The other three world lists (IOC 7.1, H&M4, Clements-2016) already place the terns in Laridae. (See the IOC comparison spreadsheet here) This article should obviously do the same.

Within Laridae we need to decide whether to treat the terns as a subfamily Sterninae or as a tribe Sternini. The IOC list doesn't help here as it doesn't specify subfamilies or tribes. Most of the primary literature appears to use Sternini:

• Thomas et al 2004 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-4-28 is cited by the article and uses the tribe Sternini for the terns, Larini for the gulls etc.
• Bridge et al 2005 doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2004.12.010 is cited several times by article and uses Sternini (even in the article title).
• Efe et al 2009 doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2009.03.030
• Spendelow 2015 doi:10.1675/063.038.0407
• Cibois et al 2016 doi:10.1111/ibi.12363
• Liechty 2017 here

The AOU/AOS uses the subfamily Sterninae. I haven't access to H&M4 Vol 1 ISBN 9780956861108 to check on whether they use Sternini or Sterninae.

The family Laridae is expanded to include the "Gulls, Terns, Skimmers". The wiki article on Gulls will need to be rejigged - either expanded to include Terns and Skimmers - or restricted to Larini/Larinae with another article for the family Laridae. Note that I've already moved the three skimmers (genus Rynchops) into Laridae. Aa77zz (talk) 08:29, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Just change Laridae from a redirect into the family page. And "gulls" can be restricted to the subfamily or tribe. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:59, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

That suggestion seems the simplest solution, other than the necessary tweaks needed to the article texts Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:00, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Cas and Jim.......I'll get there eventually unless someone else wants to give it a go.....Pvmoutside (talk) 22:53, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Cass suggestion works. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this works but the question of whether the automatic taxobox should say Sternini or Sterninae remains open - I think we can safely put it at Sternini for now and introduce Sterninae between this and Laridae if that is how it should be. Strangely there was no automated taxo box for Laridae, so I have created that and hopefully this should work until things are refined and further cleaned up. Shyamal (talk) 02:30, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

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