— Finally… new evidence — +Addenda

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New from Mark Michaels/Steve Latta’s Project Principalis group (Louisiana) finally some evidentiary work I find intriguing enough to pass along (for perhaps the first time in 10+ years!). The non peer-reviewed pre-print is here (including photos):

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.06.487399v1.full.pdf

I especially like the focus on automatic camera (and drone) photos, which I’ve long felt were, short of human monitoring of a nest or roost hole, the evidence needed (sighting and audio evidence is also mentioned in the paper but not dwelled upon). There are other various elements of the paper I especially like (and some other elements I’d be pretty cautious about), but won’t detail that here, so readers can adjudge for themselves (besides I need to read parts of the paper over another one or two more times for certain details), and I don't know when or if full publication will come.

The evidence is once again NOT definitive or conclusive, but intriguing, which one almost hates to say given the history of all the controversial "intriguing" evidence that has come before. At least on a first reading this is better than that, but easy to imagine some of the objections that may be forthcoming. I hate that we continue to move along in the IBWO debate at an incremental snail's pace awaiting a truly conclusive photo/video/encounter, but this work is encouraging.

I assume this also is the new evidence that will be up for discussion at Matt Courtman’s coming Monday night IBWO podcast. [see note #1 below]

[It's possible(?) I'll add addenda to this post at a later point.]

[sorry, just realized that the PDF I linked to above does not contain links for the "supplementary" videos; for those, find the links on the original bioRxiv page:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.06.487399v1.supplementary-material ]

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ADDENDUM 1:

After re-reading several times, a few miscellaneous things to note (…there are also several things I WON’T address just to avoid the argumentation and vitriol that might follow!):

1)  I originally assumed that Matt Courtman’s coming Monday night IBWO discussion would involve a claim by a different individual in a different state (not Louisiana), but upon the timing of this Project Principalis release just automatically (above) switched to assuming this would be the evidence coming under review. However, various dates and other matters don’t line up, so am back to thinking the Monday night discussion may well be about yet a different claim (which would be interesting to have 2 such back-to-back claims arising so close together; the alternative possibility is that the Monday talk centers around evidence still from the Louisiana group but too recent to have made its way into this paper).

2)  Just want to note, for any unaware of it, that “bioRxiv” while an open access, non-peer-reviewed, non-edited journal, is NOT on the level of the many (not all) open access journals that have in recent years besmirched scientific publication. It is simply a free preprint-server for biology, very similar to respected arxives that serve many other scientific disciplines. And Project Principalis was wise to file the paper here, and not wait for the interminable months that acceptance in an appropriate publication would have taken — even at that, the evidence being reported here is mostly months to years old. [They are attempting to have the piece published, but IBWO papers can be difficult to find a taker.]

3)  There is a fair amount of speculation in this paper, as is always the case, of necessity, with any Ivory-bill commentary because we truly know so little about the species with certainty, so much information being drawn from such tiny sample sizes — and there is a strong tendency on ‘believers’ parts to accept past assumptions when it suits our purposes, and argue against them when it doesn’t. So I don’t doubt that critics will find much here to yawn at and shrug as weak claims. But some of the photos, from trail cameras and videos are powerful, in seeming to show a large woodpecker with a white saddleback; in fact better than that, and unlike almost any prior evidence, showing multiple woodpeckers with diagnostic clues (…even with that said, I realize alternative explanations may yet be offered, and further film analysis will be needed). As someone who has been discouraged with the trajectory of the debate ever since the closing down of the Cornell and Auburn searches (even while still believing the species persisted), this is as bright a light as I’ve seen. 

I'll note that I am viewing the paper’s pics on a 7-year-old 13” laptop screen (AND even then am intrigued), and I imagine those with larger desktop screens will have a better view (there are some things the authors claim to see, which I can’t make out on my screen, and certainly don't recommend viewing these pics on a mobile device).

4)  Lastly, I wish Bill Pulliam was around to see this work, and swap ideas about it; I think, overall, it would’ve brought a grin to his grizzly face….

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