Dr. Juan Ignacio (Nacho) Areta is head of the Laboratorio de Ecología, Comportamiento y Sonidos Naturales (ECoSoN) based in northwest Argentina and CONICET researcher (National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina). He is a field biologist focused on recording natural sounds, whose broad interests in the evolution and natural history of birds include taxonomy and systematics, vocalizations and mechanical sounds, migration, and aerial displays. ORCID 0000-0001-8588-3030

Nacho is a member of the AviList Taxonomic Committee.

Frederik Brammer is a birdwatcher and freelance biologist and ornithologist from Denmark, living in Brazil. Apart from Denmark, his field experience is from Western Palearctic (including Turkey and North Africa), tropical South America and Tanzania. He is interested in taxonomy, conservation, biogeography, phylogeny, classification, nomenclature, and bibliography of birds, particularly in the tropics. He was a coauthor of Cuckoos of the World (2012), and the major contributor to the section on New World oscines in The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (2014).

Frederik is a member of the AviList Bibliographic and Nomenclatural Committee. 

Dr. Leslie (Les) Christidis is a Professor at Southern Cross University, Australia. He has been the Senior Curator of Birds at Museum Victoria and Deputy Director of the Australian Museum. He has published over 200 papers, books, and book chapters on the systematics and evolution of birds and mammals. These include coediting The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (2014) and The Largest Avian Radiation: The Evolution of Perching Birds, or the Order Passeriformes (2020), as well as coauthoring Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds (2008). Les only became interested in birdwatching halfway through his PhD as his prime interest has been mammals, especially ungulates and carnivores. ORCID 0000-0002-3345-6034

Les is the Chair of the AviList Executive Committee.

Dr. Terry Chesser is a Research Zoologist with the United States Geological Survey and a Research Associate (formerly Curator of North American Birds) at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C. He has studied avian phylogenetics and phylogeography, mainly in the Neotropics, for most of his professional career. Terry has been Chair of the North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society since 2008. ORCID 0000-0003-4389-7092

Terry serves on the Taxonomic Committee and also chairs the North American Regional Advisory Group (AOS-NACC).

J. Ryan Doherty is a digital designer and web developer based in Boston, Massachusetts. Despite a late start in ornithology, he is an avid birder (and eBirder) and photographer concentrating his efforts in New England. Other interests include tree identification, music, and history. He currently volunteers as the webmaster for the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC) and remains convinced that waking up early is not a requirement of the successful birder.

Ryan is a member of the Technical Committee, serving as the webmaster for AviList and assisting with the website’s design, content, and maintenance.

Dr. Paul F. Donald is Senior Scientist at BirdLife International, where he works on a number of issues including taxonomy. He has a particular interest in larks (Alaudidae), believing that if it is possible to sort out the taxonomy of this family, then it should be possible to sort out any family! His other research interests include the conservation ecology of threatened species, the effectiveness of conservation actions, and the impacts of trade, road traffic, and agriculture on birds. He is happiest when sitting on a clifftop in Scotland watching seabirds. ORCID 0000-0003-0023-6200

Paul is a member of AviList’s Executive Committee and Taxonomic Committee.

David Donsker is a retired anatomic and clinical pathologist. He has been a coeditor of the IOC World Bird List since its inception, taxonomic editor of Birds of the World: Recommended English Names (2006), and an active member and past president of the Nuttall Ornithological Club. He also holds memberships in the American Ornithological Society, Wilson Ornithological Society, British Ornithologists’ Union and other international and American state bird societies. He has been a world birder for most of his adult life, and is avidly interested in avian biogeography, taxonomy and nomenclature, and the art and literature of ornithology from the 16^th to early 20^th centuries. ORCID 0000-0001-6275-0702

David is an original member of the AviList Executive Committee and Chair of the Bibliographic and Nomenclatural Committee.

Robert (Bob) Dowsett is an independent researcher specializing in Afrotropical ornithology. His varied career has included several years as a game ranger in Zambia, Keeper of Natural History in the Zambian National Museum at Livingstone, and Director of Odzala National Park in the Republic of Congo. Publications, as author or coauthor, include atlases and handbooks of the birds of Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Benin, and Togo, and of the mammals of Malawi, as well as a checklist of birds of the Afrotropical and Malagasy regions. His main interests concern zoogeography, migration and taxonomy of birds, mammals, and Lepidoptera.

Bob was a member of the AviList Taxonomic Committee from 2020–2025 (up to the release of v2025) and now chairs the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Advisory Group.

Jeff Gerbracht recently retired from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO) where he has been a software engineer since 2001. Jeff was involved with a number of participatory science projects, but his main focus was the development and growth of eBird. More recently, he built the software system used by Birds of the World. He also worked closely with the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates collection management system and his long involvement with avian taxonomy includes the annual integration of Clements into many of the Cornell Lab systems. He was a member of the Biodiversity Information Standards Taxonomic Concept working group and currently cochairs the Monitoring and Checklist working groups for BirdsCaribbean. Jeff enjoys bouldering, Caribbean birding (and eBirding), and scuba diving with his family. ORCID 0000-0003-0551-5989

He is a member of the AviList Technical Committee.

Marshall J. Iliff is a project leader for eBird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he helps guide the project’s priorities and developments. He focuses primarily on eBird data quality and the global network of expert reviewers for eBird; this includes collaboration with other Cornell Lab colleagues, including the lead taxonomists, and members of the Merlin, Macaulay Library, and Status and Trends (eBird Science) teams. Since 2007, Marshall has worked on implementing annual taxonomic updates for the eBird and Clements taxonomies and any associated data affected by these changes. Marshall lives just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife, son, and two dogs and gets out birding (and eBirding) wherever and whenever he can. ORCID 0000-0002-1666-6603

Marshall is the Chair of the Technical Committee and a member of the Executive Committee.

Max Kirsch is currently an Evolutionary Biology MSc student in Kevin Burns’s lab at San Diego State University, California. He received his BSc from Cornell University, where he worked in the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates as well as the Cornell University Insect Collection. Among other activities, he has also worked at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and volunteered in the bird collections at the Field Museum, served as a taxon curator for birds on iNaturalist, and is a member of the Early Career Systematics Group of the American Ornithological Society North American Classification Committee. Max has a passion for avian taxonomy/systematics and nomenclature and has spent extensive time reviewing recent updates to the eBird/Clements checklist, among others.

Max was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025).

Marek Kuziemko works for Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Rzeszow, Poland.

Marek was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025).

Dr. Denis Lepage is the Senior Director, Data Science and Technology at Birds Canada. He leads the technology development of the NatureCounts and Motus Wildlife Tracking System platforms, large-scale data projects that support conservation, and scientific efforts in Canada and beyond. Denis has also created and maintains Avibase, an online database that organizes bird taxonomic, nomenclature, and distribution data globally. Through Avibase, he has organized taxonomic concepts for hundreds of bird taxonomies spanning the last 150 years, and this effort has been instrumental in AviList’s effort to reconcile global bird checklists. ORCID 0009-0009-8494-5186

Denis is a member of the AviList Executive Committee and the Technical Committee.

Richard Littauer is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. His thesis is focusing on modeling highly pathogenic avian bird flu for birds in Aotearoa New Zealand. He holds an MSc in Computational Linguistics from Saarland University, and an MA (Hons) in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. He has taught Latin at the high school level, and moonlights as a creator of constructed languages for films and novels. He is broadly interested in the intersection of informatics, linguistics, classics, and taxonomic nomenclature. He has a private eBird account for birds he has identified in his dreams. ORCID 0000-0001-5428-7535

Richard was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025).

Dr. Janette A. Norman is a Senior Research Fellow at Southern Cross University, Australia. She has also been Senior Curator for Molecular Biology and head of the Population and Evolutionary Genetics Unit at Museum Victoria where she established Australia’s first dedicated ancient DNA laboratory and a forensic DNA database for the identification of bird species impacted by the illegal trade in wildlife. Her main research interests are the systematics, evolution, ecology, and conservation of Australian birds and mammals. ORCID 0000-0002-6450-8159

Janette is a member of the Technical Committee and was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025).

Alan P. Peterson, MD, has worked actively on bibliographic and nomenclatural issues in natural history since 1985 with a focus on birds. He started the website www.zoonomen.net in 1995 maintaining a world list of birds and providing alpha taxonomic bibliographic details.

He is a member of the AviList Bibliographic and Nomenclatural Committee.

Dr. Pamela (Pam) Rasmussen is the lead taxonomist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and has previously worked at the Smithsonian Institution Division of Birds and the Michigan State University’s Museum and Department of Integrative Biology. She works with Cornell Lab colleagues on the annual taxonomic updates for the eBird/Clements taxonomy, is a long-serving member of the American Ornithological Society and North American Classification Committee, and more recently a co-managing editor of the IOC World Bird List, and a voting member on English names for the South American Classification Committee. Pam is lead author on the two-volume Birds of South Asia: the Ripley Guide (2005 and 2012) and has coauthored the scientific descriptions of 11 species of Asian birds, as well as papers on multiple rediscoveries (most notably, the Forest Owlet). Pam has birded (and eBirded) in 84 countries, territories, or dependencies, and currently has an eBird checklist streak of over 2640 consecutive days. ORCID 0000-0002-6750-8218

Pam is a member of AviList’s Executive Committee and Taxonomic Committee.

Dr. Frank E. Rheindt is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and head of the Avian Evolution Lab. His group pursues phylogenomic, population-genomic, and evolutionary research on birds, as well as working closely with regional Asian stakeholders on bird conservation projects. He has identified substantial cryptic avian diversity in Indonesia and surrounding areas leading to the scientific description of roughly a dozen new bird species and many additional subspecies. Frank has been serving as a Commissioner and Councillor of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and as a contributor to the committee framing the new ICZN Code. Frank has been a lifelong obsessive world birder. ORCID 0000-0001-8946-7085

Frank is Deputy Chair of the AviList Executive Committee, Chair of the Taxonomic Committee, and former member of Bibliographic and Nomenclatural Committee.

Dr. Thomas (Tom) Schulenberg is retired from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where he managed the eBird/Clements checklist and was a science editor for the Birds of the World website. During earlier stages in his career he was associated with the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Conservation International, and the Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University. Tom’s primary research interests are the systematics, vocalizations, and natural history of birds of the tropics. He has undertaken fieldwork throughout Middle and South America, and in Madagascar, but has focused mostly on Peru and is a coauthor of the Birds of Peru field guide (2007; Spanish edition published in 2010). He also coauthored the first descriptions of seven (to date) species of birds, only four of which were tapaculos (Scytalopus), and rediscovered one species that was known from only a single specimen, taken almost 60 years earlier. Tom aims to keep a hand in research, and otherwise stays active with a regimen of daily birding (and eBirding), lives in Ithaca, New York, roadtrips across the continent annually with his wife, dog, and cat, and travels abroad whenever he can.

Tom is a member of the AviList Executive Committee and the Taxonomic Committee. 

Dr. Martin Stervander is a Swedish ornithologist and evolutionary biologist based in Edinburgh, where he is the Senior Curator of Birds at National Museums Scotland. He is a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum in London/Tring, Managing Editor of Ornis Svecica, Associate Editor of Ibis, and member of BirdLife Sweden’s Taxonomic Committee. Martin is particularly interested in speciation and island adaptation in birds and has broad research interests that have increasingly tilted in a more taxonomic direction. He is passionate about the broad utility of museum collections, including genomic sequencing of historical specimens, and has a thing for ordering species lists in a logical way to reflect avian evolution. ORCID 0000-0002-6139-7828

Martin is AviList’s taxonomic sequence specialist, was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025), and joined for v2026 as a member of the Technical Committee and the Palearctic Regional Advisory Group.

Gustav Asplund is a member of BirdLife Sweden’s Taxonomic Committee since 2019, where he has assessed and adjudicated taxonomic issues within the Western Palearctic. Another aspect of this work regards Swedish names for all bird species of the world, where Gustav has been a driving force in adjusting them to be descriptive. Additionally, he is in charge of compiling and updating the unique list of extinct birds (presently spanning the Holocene). As a journalist, Gustav has produced a celebrated Swedish radio and pod series, Borta för alltid (“Forever Gone”), and he is an avid communicator to the birding community and the public, including continuous prolific contributions to Wikipedia.

Gustav joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Palearctic Regional Advisory Group.

James Eaton is first and foremost an avid birder, and co-founder of Birdtour Asia, an Asia-oriented bird tour company. Residing in Malaysia since 2006, he spends most of his time in the field, studying the identification, vocalisations and behaviour of the birds throughout the whole continent. This has resulted in the discovery of multiple new species in Indonesia in the field and several cryptic species at his desk resulting from fieldwork. Lead author of the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago, the first field guide covering the entire archipelago, he has also published over 100 manuscripts and articles. James has a PhD in social sciences, having studied taxonomically cryptic species and their conservation status. A keen conservationist, is also a member of the IUCN Asian Songbird Trade and Hornbill specialist groups. On top of that, he is an eBird reviewer for Indonesia, Timor Leste, and East Malaysia. ORCID 0000-0002-4877-2208

James joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Oriental Regional Advisory Group.

Praveen J is a scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, Bengaluru, India, and serves as the Chief Editor of Indian BIRDS – The Journal of South Asian Ornithology. Trained as a computer engineer, he is also a passionate birdwatcher who enjoys exploring remote and under-visited regions in the hope of discovering something new. Praveen’s work focuses on citizen science initiatives that monitor and document the spatio-temporal distribution of birds, bridging the gap between amateur birdwatchers and professional ecologists and wildlife biologists. Over the years, his interests have encompassed a wide range of ornithological fields, including forest and pelagic bird monitoring, citizen science, bioacoustics, large-scale data analysis, classical taxonomy, systematics, and species red-listing. He is the author of Birds of India – The New Synopsis and is a co-maintainer of the bird checklists for India, the Indian Subcontinent, and South Asia. ORCID 0000-0002-5422-2763

Praveen joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Oriental Regional Advisory Group.

Erling Jirle is a birdwatcher from south Sweden and is the long-time convener of BirdLife Sweden’s Taxonomic Committee, in which he has been a member since 2005. Retired from Lund University in 2024 after 44 years of insect pheromone research, Erling has a broad interest in biology and is a keen global birder. He has visited over 70 countries and written multiple detailed travel reports. He is involved in country checklist maintenance at iGoTerra and is especially interested in distribution patterns of species and subspecies.

Erling joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Palearctic Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Leo Joseph is a birdwatcher who got hooked on evolution a long time ago, having now racked up 50 years as a student of avian systematics and evolution especially in Australia, New Guinea and South America. After his PhD on the evolutionary history of eastern Australian rainforest birds, he spent three years in Uruguay where he studied the evolution and ecology of bird migration, in particular its climatic correlates in southern South America. He then spent eight years at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia at Drexel University where he served as an Assistant Curator and Chair of the Department of Ornithology, continuing his work on South American and Australian birds. From 2005–2025, he has been back in Australia building a body of work on Australo-Papuan birds in his role as Director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection (CSIRO), Canberra. 2026 begins retirement with more birding and time for his other great passion, the 88 keys of a piano. ORCID 0000-0001-7564-1978

Leo joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Australasian Regional Advisory Group.

Markus Lagerqvist is a longtime member of BirdLife Sweden’s Taxonomic Committee, which apart from taxonomic decisions also keep a list of Swedish names of all the birds of the world. He is also engaged in bird conservation projects, and an avid world-birder with a special passion for birding in the tropics, including taking part in the rediscovery of the Karimui Owlet-nightjar in New Guinea.

Markus was an expert reviewer for AviList version 1 (v2025) and is a member of the Palearctic Regional Advisory Group.

Wich’yanan (Jay) Limparungpatthanakij is a member of the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) Records Committee. His MSc thesis studied avian mixed-species flocks. Besides behavioural ecology, he has a keen interest in species identification, evolution, and systematics. He is involved with various conservation and participatory science projects, including volunteering as a curator on iNaturalist. His field experience as a tour leader helps enrich his knowledge on birds. Among publications he co-authored is the Lynx Edicions field guide Birds of Thailand. Apart from birding (and eBirding), Jay enjoys learning about all kinds of life forms (with an emphasis on vertebrates), attending concerts and watching movies. ORCID 0000-0002-5705-9455

Wich’yanan joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Oriental Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Colin Miskelly is a curator of vertebrates at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), and previously worked for the New Zealand Department of Conservation. He has undertaken research on seabirds and endemic snipe (Coenocorypha spp.) on all of New Zealand’s outlying island groups, and was closely involved in the development of techniques to translocate burrow-nesting petrels. Colin is the convenor of the Birds New Zealand Checklist Committee, convenor of the Birds New Zealand Records Appraisal Committee, project manager and editor of New Zealand Birds Online, and editor of the journal Notornis. Between November 2023 and March 2024, Colin walked the 3,200 km Te Araroa Trail, counting every bird along the length of New Zealand. ORCID 0000-0001-8789-3208

Colin joined the AviList team in July 2025 as a member of the Australasian Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Elize Ng is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, where she is documenting the conservation actions for shorebirds along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. Her PhD at the University of Tasmania took her to the icy edges of the world, exploring how climate and biogeography shape the lives of Antarctic seabirds. Prior to that, she conducted research at the National University of Singapore on evolution, population connectivity, and the impacts of wildlife trade in tropical regions. When away from her desk, Elize is usually found in places with more birds or fish than people, or tasting her way through the local food scene. ORCID 0000-0003-1014-182X

Elize joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Oriental Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Thane Pratt is a life-long birder who has pursued a career in avian ecology and conservation in his home state, Hawaiʻi, and further afield in Micronesia and the grand island of New Guinea. In 2009, he retired from a 20-year career as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Interior, based in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. There he was one of a team of researchers investigating why native Hawaiian forest birds are so endangered and what can be done to save them. He was lead editor of Conservation Biology of Hawaiian Forest Birds, published by Yale University Press in 2009. Retirement allowed him to take up again the studies of New Guinea birds that began with his PhD research at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 1983. Together with Bruce Beehler, he has published two field guides to birds of New Guinea and a compendium on taxonomy, systematics and distribution of New Guinea birds. He is an Associate in Science at Bishop Museum’s Department of Vertebrate Zoology and also a reviewer for eBird.

Thane joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Australasian Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Keren Sadanandan is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore and is an associate editor for the Journal of Asian Ornithology. She previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence (formerly the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology) in Germany. Keren has published research related to population genetics, phylogenetics, conservation biology and ecology. Currently, her research focuses on using comparative genomic methods to identify the genetic elements underpinning unusual phenotypes in birds. Keren enjoys growing carnivorous plants and spends her vacations birding, scuba diving and sampling varied cuisines. ORCID 0000-0001-6554-8091

Keren is the Chair of the Oriental Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Richard Schodde is former Director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, Australia. A specialist in Australo-Papuan avian systematics and zoogeography, he has published nearly 200 papers and several textbooks on that avifauna in those fields. He has served on nomenclature and scientific program committees and working groups of the International Ornithologists’ Union, and as Honorary President of the Union 2014–2018.

Richard was a member of the AviList Executive Committee and the Taxonomic Committee for v2025 and is a member of the Australasian Regional Advisory Grup for v2026.

Dr. Min Zhao is a Chinese ornithologist and evolutionary biologist, currently working as a postdoctoral associate at Virginia Tech. She is an early career associate editor for Avian Research. Her research explores avian phylogenomics, evolutionary processes, and biogeographical patterns, with a broad taxonomic and geographic scope spanning bird groups from both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. She is an eBirder and eBird regional reviewer. ORCID 0000-0002-2416-8778

Min joined the AviList team in June 2025 as a member of the Palearctic Regional Advisory Group.

Dr. Per Alström is a Professor of Ornithology at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has previously been employed at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Swedish Museum of Natural History. He has published over 150 scientific papers, books, and book chapters including coauthor of chapters in Handbook of the Birds of the World (2004, 2006) and The Largest Avian Radiation: The Evolution of Perching Birds, or the Order Passeriformes (2020). Per has also been involved in descriptions of seven species and three subspecies of birds new to science. He has been an advisor to the IOC World Bird List and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the international ornithological journal Avian Research. ORCID 0000-0001-7182-2763

Per was a member of the AviList Taxonomic Committee from 2020–2023.

N. Wayne Longmore has been employed in the Australian Museum, Australian National Wildlife Collection, Museum Victoria and Queensland Museum for some 40 years. He has contributed to several avian orders for the Australian Faunal Directory (Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra).

Wayne was a member of the AviList Bibliographic and Nomenclatural Committee.

Dr. James V. Remsen, Jr. is an Emeritus Professor and Curator of Birds at the Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University. He served on the North American Classification Committee for 40 years and founded the South American Classification Committee in 1998. He coedited Vol. 1 of the 4th edition of The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (2013).

Van was a founding member of the AviList Taxonomic Committee, serving in 2020.

Frank Gill for ongoing support and coordination of the initial conversations that gave rise to AviList

Dominique Homberger and Lei Fumin for coordination and ongoing support from the International Ornithologists’ Union

Stephen Garnett for advice and feedback in multiple arenas throughout this process, and especially with our Terms of Reference and range statements for many taxa of Australian birds

Melissa Mancuso (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) for initial website creation and design assistance

Hugh Powell (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) for editorial assistance with the web content and Sarah Seroussi (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) for additional web support

Staff and leadership of eBird, Birds of the World, and Merlin teams at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for ongoing support

Nigel Collar for significant input, especially surrounding taxonomic decisions, throughout this process

Multiple individuals from the BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group for input and advice on various taxonomic riddles

Luke Seitz for the photos above (when no human photo was available), listed from the top: Pink-headed Warbler Cardellina versicolor; South Island Wren Xenicus gilviventris; Ecuadorian Hillstar Oreotrochilus chimborazo; Egyptian Plover Pluvianus aegyptius; and Turquoise-browed Motmot Eumomota superciliosa (at left)