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Systematics
Placed in tribe Tringini within subfamily Scolopacinae by Am. Ornithol. Union (1998). Original description in 1789 as Scolopax flavipes by J. F. Gmelin, who based species on the “Yellow Shank” from New York in T. Pennant’s Arctic Zoology .
Geographic Variation; Subspecies
Monotypic.
Related Species
While most classifications have regarded Greater and Lesser yellowlegs as closely related species, the 2 constituting Ridgway’s (1919) genus Neoglottis, some evidence suggests the yellowlegs are not sister taxa. Comparison of skeletal characters led Nichols (1923) to question Ridgway’s segregation of the yellowlegs from similar Eurasian tringines (e.g., Common Redshank [T. totanus] and Common Greenshank [T. nebularia]), and a recent phylogenetic analysis supports placing Greater Yellowlegs as sister species to Spotted Redshank (T. erythropus) with Lesser Yellowlegs among an unresolved group of other tringines, including Marsh Sandpiper (T. stagnatilis), Common Redshank, and Common Greenshank (Chu 1995, reanalysis of J. G. Strauch’s osteological data).
Tibbitts, T. Lee and William Moskoff. 1999. Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/427
