Scops owls are owls in the family Strigidae. Scops owls are the genus Otus. They live in the Old World. Otus has more species in it than any other genus of owls. There are 59 species of scops owls. Scops owls are brown, grayish, or reddish in color, but they can have lighter colors on the belly or face. This helps to make them hard to see when they sit in trees. Sometimes, owls in the same spcies look different from each other. Scops owls are small and move easily. Female scops owls are usually larger than males in the same species.
For a long time, scientists thought screech owls were scops owls too. Now, scientists think that they are two different groups of owls.
Taxonomy
The genus Otus was first used in 1769. The Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant made it for the Indian scops owl (O. bakkamoena). The name comes from the Latin word and the Greek word ōtos meaning horned or eared owl (cf. οὖς, ὠτός, "ear"). Marie Jules César Savigny made the English name "Scops" in 1809. and it comes from the Greek skōps meaning small owl.
Scientists have changed their minds about which owls should be in Otus and which owls are only their relatives. For most of the 20th century, scientists said screech owls were also scops owls. But they changed their minds. Now, screech owls are in their own genus, Megascops. Screech owls live in the Americas, and they act differently, live in different places, have different body shapes, and have different DNA from scops owls.
History
Scientists have changed their minds about Otus many times, especially about whether screech owls should be in it or not. DNA evidence helped them decide.
By the mid-19th century, scientists knew that Otus had more than one genus in it. First, in 1848, scientists made a second genus for screech owls, Megascops. In 1850s, they made other genera for other owls that had been in Otus. They made Macabra, Ptilopsis, Gymnasio, Gymnoglaux, and Pyrroglaux for different groups of owls.
In the early 20th century, scientists liked the idea of putting species in a few big groups instead of more small groups. The 3rd edition of the AOU checklist in 1910 put the screech owls back in Otus. Although not all scientists agreed about this, it was the most common way to think about owl groups for most of the 20th century. In 1988, some scientists tried to put back all the genera from 140 years earlier by treating them as subgenuses inside Otus. But this did not make sense. It did not match the evolutionary and phylogenetic information.
In the late 20th century, scientists started to use DNA to tell how animals were related to each other. This changed things for Otus. In 1999, the first mtDNA cytochrome b study of these owls showed that the separate groups were really different genera and not only subgenera. The scientists said that most of the genera proposed around 1850 were right or close to right. Not all scientists agreed at first, but they did more and more DNA studies. In time, almost all scientists came to trust DNA. In 2003, the AOU formally decided to take screech owls out of Otus and put them in the genus Megascops.
Species
The genus Otus has 59 species (including 3 extinct species):