Talk:Little penguin

Untitled

There's a whole exhibit in San Diego with about 20 of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.56.145.10 (talk) 04:47, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Naming controversy

Er, why is there not a section about Australian PC wowsers deciding in their infinite wisdom that the term Fairy penguin is supposedly offensive to small winged people or some such rot? The term Fairy penguin has quietly gone out of the media over the past couple of years for patently ridiculous reasons. 210.9.143.86 (talk) 01:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Added to the intro of the article. It was a big deal at the time, so I agree it should be mentioned. Unfortunately I don't have an online cite, but I did have a reference to the published article in newspaper print for verification. The only online link I found has been deleted, almost as if the paper didn't want the story to exist anymore. Hmm. SJ2571 (talk) 23:38, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not correct that this occurred. Little Penguin was John Gould's original name for the species and "Fairy Penguin" was his original name for the Tasmanian subspecies. When taxonomists found that the Tasmanian and mainland birds were the same, the oldest name was given precedence, as is taxonomic convention, and so Little Penguin was accepted. There are still many birds in Australia with Fairy in their name - Fairy Tern, Fairy Gerygone, Fairy Prion, Fairy Martin, and all of the Fairywrens. Not to mention various Boobies, scrubtits and shrike-tits. There is a great book published by CSIRO called "Australian Bird Names" by Ian Fraser and Jeannie Gray that covers all this. Owheelj (talk) 23:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Eudyptula novaehollandiae into Little penguin

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. TRL (talk) 01:12, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

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According to the IOC vs other lists, only the TiF (Taxonomy in Flux) Checklist recognizes it as a separate species. The main problem is that we cannot even confirm its correct scientific name. I'll give a detailed explanation. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 00:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

According to Banks et al. (2002), the population in Otago is the nominate; it is closely related with E. m. novaehollandiae, the Australian race. The other four subspecies form a separate clade, and E. m. albosignata was described earliest among them. Therefore, the separate clade should be named E. albosignata, or referred to by its common name, white-flippered penguin.

Both IOC and Clements/eBird agree on its subspecies assignments.

Peucker et al. (2009) proposed that within the traditionally defined geographic range of E. albognata, individuals of both clades could be found. And all six traditionally defined subspecies are paraphyletic.

Grosser et al. (2015) agreed that the Australian race and Otago race are distinct from others. While it proposed that E. minor 's holotype belongs to the New Zealand clade. Therefore the NZ clade should retain the name E. minor. The Australian and Otago clade should be named E. novaehollandiae.

subspecies	novaehollandiae	minor	albosignata		iredalei	variabilis	chathamensis
Banks et al., 2002	little penguin E. minor		white-flippered penguin E. albosignata
IOC	little penguin E. minor
			split of White-flippered Penguin not yet warranted
Clements/eBird/BOW	little penguin E. minor
			Race albosignata often considered a distinct species.
Peucker et al.,2009	ASENZ clade			NZO clade
Grosser et al.,2015	Australian little penguin E. novaehollandiae	little penguin E. minor

Obviously, the two clades and their ranges are clear and without controversy. The main issue lies in the subspecies assignment of the holotype, which will determine the names of the two clades. I believe this is beyond Wikipedia's scope. Either DNA sequencing of the holotype is required, or the ICZN Committee needs to implement a name conservation. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 00:54, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

This also means that merging the white-flippered penguin into the little penguin and splitting the Eudyptula novaehollandiae from little penguin is not correct. Even if you believe that the current names are correct, you should first move the little penguin to Eudyptula novaehollandiae, and then move the white-flippered penguin to the little penguin. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 01:34, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I just realized that these three articles actually existed at the same time. That's incredible. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 01:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe the articles should not be split until the ICZN Committee resolves the naming controversy, or until the main ornithology authorities recognize it. Otherwise, I think both articles should be renamed. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 03:01, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support merge. We follow IOC, even in cases where both the other major checklists disagree with it; in a case like this, there is literally no reason to diverge from IOC, especially since there is no other established consensus on how to treat this complex. AryKun (talk) 10:12, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support I had carried out this merge back in 2018 but it was quickly undone, and I didn't feel like fussing about it. My reasoning was nowhere near as detailed - I essentially thought the population didn't require a separate article for purposes of concision - but that hasn't changed. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:28, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Conditional support. It appears that I preformed the edits under discussion well over a year ago. On 12 May 2022 I restored the article Eudyptula novaehollandiae, which user Elmidae had turned into a redirect page back in 2018. On 14 May 2022 I hunted down this image to include as a range map for the supposedly separate New Zealand and Australian species: Map of distribution of Eudyptula penguins. Blue and red colours... | Download Scientific Diagram (researchgate.net). On 31 May 2022 I transferred a significant amount of information from Little penguin to Eudyptula novaehollandiae. That same day I also merged White-flippered penguin into Little penguin. I made several other edits to the articles in question in May and June 2022.

As I recall, I merged White-flippered penguin and split off Eudyptula novaehollandiae to match what I perceived to be the most up-to-date taxonomy in the literature. I also thought I was rectifying problems of internal inconsistency within Wikipedia. On 12 May 2022 I indicated in the edit history of Eudyptula novaehollandiae that the Australian clade is treated as a separate species by the articles Penguin and Eudyptula (which is still the case today), despite not being recognized by Little penguin. I also mention this consistency problem in an invisible comment at the top of Eudyptula novaehollandiae, which is still there today.

Despite this clear problem of internal consistency, I am not prepared to defend this taxonomy, since the users above provided a robust argument for merging these articles back on 10 August and 11 September 2023. Instead, I say "conditional support," since my support for the merge is theoretically contingent on you fixing problems of internal consistency elsewhere on Wikipedia, including the problems in the articles Penguin and Eudyptula that I noticed back in May 2022.

You might want to merge both Eudyptula and Eudyptula novaehollandiae into Little penguin, and leave White-flippered penguin as a redirect page just like it is today. In this scenario, Little penguin would be the only article about this topic. However, you would still need to edit the article Penguin to clarify that the status of Eudyptula novaehollandiae as a separate species is disputed and currently not supported by the IOC.

Lastly, you might want to read the comment above by user Danimations from 26 October 2022. Columbianmammoth (talk) 03:09, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment. Several papers more recent than any of the papers mentioned by user Interaccoonale on 10 August 2023 use the name Eudyptula novaehollandiae. You mention Grosser et al. 2015. I also see papers from 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 that use the name Eudyptula novaehollandiae. Whether or not you end up performing the merge, this fact should be mentioned in the article's lead. Columbianmammoth (talk) 04:37, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment: The authoritative Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand (5th edition, 2022) recognizes one species: the little penguin (Eudyptula minor). it recognizes two subspecies that occur in New Zealand: the New Zealand little penguin (Eudyptula minor minor) and Australian little penguin (Eudyptula minor novaehollandiae), the latter being a more recent arrival to the country.

Columbianmammoth (talk) 07:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

References

Knowing little about the scientific classifications, I have just been confused when I came to the Little penguin article. SPRAT only shows Eudyptula minor — Little Penguin. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:06, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Protracted merge from Eudyptula novaehollandiae

All of the comments in the previous merge discussion are from August to November 2023. The discussion was closed April 2024 with a consensus to merge. As of September 2025, the merge has not been carried out and the page Eudyptula novaehollandiae still exists.

I am not attempting to re-open or re-litigate anything. I am merely pointing out that the merge has taken far to long to carry out.

I respect the result of the previous merge discussion, for the reason I mention in my last comment from November 2023: The authoritative Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand (5th edition, 2022) recognizes one species: the little penguin (Eudyptula minor). it recognizes two subspecies that occur in New Zealand: the New Zealand little penguin (Eudyptula minor minor) and Australian little penguin (Eudyptula minor novaehollandiae), the latter being a more recent arrival to the country. Columbianmammoth (talk) 08:50, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Well, I'm not taking this on, sorry - looks a mite too involved for the time I currently have to spend on WP :/ --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:26, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I understand, I am in the same boat. Hopefully someone with sufficient time and interest will appear.

User Interaccoonale originally posted the merge request in August 2023. I wonder if they are aware the discussion ended in their favor, but the merge was never actually carried out. Columbianmammoth (talk) 02:27, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

  Y Merge completed Columbianmammoth, Elmidae, TRL, and Interaccoonale, you'll be glad to know I finally perfomed the merge! I noticed this page thanks to the template added by Columbianmammoth 3 weeks ago. FaviFake (talk) 16:17, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, this is great! Columbianmammoth (talk) 17:51, 29 September 2025 (UTC)