Geographic Variation in the Marbled Godwit and Description of an Alaska Subspecies

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Abstract
There are three breeding populations of the Marbled Godwit Limosa fedoa (Linnaeus): the prairie-breeding birds of mid-continent North America, and widely separated tundra-breeding populations at James Bay, Canada, and in the vicinity of Ugashik Bay, Alaska, on the north coast of the Alaska Peninsula. The Alaska population, which apparently winters locally on the Pacific coast from Washington [USA] to northern California, comprises birds with shorter tarsi, shorter wings, shorter culmens, and more massive bodies than those of the mid-continent populaton. Believed to have persisted near Ugashik Bay since that area formed part of Pleistocene Beringia, the Alaska birds are described as a new subspecies, L. f. beringiae.