Madagascar Martin Riparia cowani is split from Plain Martin R. paludicola (Clements 2007: 358)

Summary: The amazingly endemic-rich island of Madagascar now has yet another endemic, the Madagascar Martin, split from the widespread African Plain Martin.

Details: As with several of the taxa long treated as subspecies of Riparia paludicola (Mayr and Greenway 1960a), Riparia cowani was originally described as a full species, though by 1937 (Bannerman 1937) a version of the modern polytypic species of R. paludicola was recognized. del Hoyo and Collar (2016), on the basis of plumage distinctions and the “very different vocalizations” (Boesman 2016 [No. 412]) of R. cowani, considered cowani a separate species. Brown (2019), in an unpublished Ph.D. study using UCE data, found a relatively deep divergence between R. cowani and R. paludicola, deeper than other subspecies in the study. Thus, WGAC and Clements et al. (2023) agree with del Hoyo and Collar (2016) in treating R. cowani as specifically distinct.