Niue night heron
| Niue night heron | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Nycticorax kalavikai | ||||||||||||
| Steadman , Worthy , Anderson & Walter , 2000 |
The Niue night heron ( Nycticorax kalavikai ) is an extinct night heron , the closest living relative of which is the red-backed heron ( N. caledonicus ), as is evident from both the bone structure and the geographical proximity of both species.
Finds
Bones of at least four individuals of this large flightless bird were found by Trevor H. Worthy in Niue in 1995 and first described by Steadman in 2000. According to radiocarbon dating, they were between 5300 and 3600 years old, which is 1500 years older than the oldest archaeological finds of human settlement. This makes it the first described Nycticorax species from Polynesia . However , three bones of an extinct Nycticorax species were also found on Eua, one of the Tonga islands . Three Nycticorax species are also known from the Mascarenes , which were presumably flightless and became extinct after the Polynesians colonized them. The also extinct Ascension night heron existed on Ascension .
anatomy
The extinct Niue night heron differed from the living and consistently flightable Nycticorax species, among other things, in that its wing bones were smaller and the leg bones were stronger.
Food and specific epithet
Since Steadman suspected from the diet of other night herons that land crabs were an essential part of the night heron's diet, he chose the words kalavi (land crab) and kai (food) from the Niues language to form the epithetum of the species.
Reasons of extinction
The bones of the Niue night heron date from before the first human settlement by the Polynesians. Hunting and habitat loss may have caused the species to become extinct.