Check-list of birds of the world
Volumes 1-16
Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
1931-1987
Information
James Lee Peters (August 13, 1889 – April 19, 1952) was an American ornithologist.
Peters is best known for his multi-volume Check-list of Birds of the World (1931–52), widely referred to simply as the Peters' check-list. Compared to earlier check-lists written by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, the list by Peters made several significant advances, among others using subspecies (trinomial nomenclature), which Bowdler's had not. For the first four volumes Peters was awarded the Brewster Medal. Peters died before finishing the work, and the last volumes, as well as updates to some of the first, were completed by Ernst Mayr, James Greenway, Melvin Alvah Traylor, Jr. and others, with the final being volume 16 published in 1987. This check-list has been highly influential in ornithology, and has – either directly or indirectly – been used as a basis for numerous modern check-lists such as The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World by James Clements, The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the ...
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