Réunionibis

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Réunionibis
Artistic reconstruction of a Réunion ibi

Artistic reconstruction of a Réunion ibi

Systematics
Class : Birds (aves)
Order : Pelecaniformes
Family : Ibises and spoonbills (Threskiornithidae)
Genre : Threskiornis
Type : Réunionibis
Scientific name
Threskiornis solitarius
( Selys , 1848)

The Réunionibis ( Threskiornis solitarius ) is an extinct species of bird from the ibis and spoonbills family that was endemic to the volcanic island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean . Paintings of "white dodos " as well as contemporary reports about the "Réunion hermit" (also called "Réunion solitaire") refer most likely to this species. Hence the synonyms Raphus solitarius , Victoriornis imperialis , Apteronis solitarius , Ornithaptera borbonica , Pezophas borbonica , Didus apterornis and Borbonibis latipes . The first subfossil remains were found in 1974. Its closest relatives are the bright eyed ibis , the sacred ibis, and the spiny ibis .

History of discovery and taxonomy

White dodo and Réunion hermit

Late 17th century painting by Pieter Withoos depicting a white dodo among ducks
One of three paintings from the mid-17th century by Pieter Holsteyn the Younger showing a white dodo

The taxonomic history of the Réunionibi is tangled and complex, due to the ambiguous and scant evidence that was available to scientists well into the 1980s. The supposed "white dodo" from Réunion is now considered an erroneous assumption based on the few contemporary reports describing the Réunionibis, combined with paintings of white dodos from Mauritius by the Dutch painters Pieter Withoos and Pieter Holsteyn the Younger from the 17th century as well as derivatives that arose in the 19th century.

The English first officer John Tatton was the first to mention a special white bird on Réunion in 1625. The French occupied the island from 1646 and called this bird "Solitaire" (hermit). Abbé Carré of the French East India Company described the hermit in 1699 and explained the reason for his name:

“In this place I saw a kind of bird that I hadn't found anywhere else; more precisely, he is what the residents call “Oiseaux Solitaire”, who loves solitude and lives only in the most remote places; no one has ever seen two or more together; he is always alone. It's no different from a guinea fowl, except for the fact that it has longer legs. The beauty of its plumage is wonderful to see. It has a variable color that turns yellow. The meat is excellent, it is one of the best dishes in this country and could be a delicacy on our tables. We wanted to catch two of these birds to send to France and present them to His Majesty, but as soon as they were on board, they died of melancholy after refusing to eat or drink. "

François Leguat , a shipwrecked French Huguenot, used the name "solitaire" for the Rodrigues solitaire , a relative of the dodo he encountered on the nearby island of Rodrigues in the 1690s, but it is believed that he got the name from a treatise by Marquis Henri Duquesne from 1689, who mentioned the Réunion type. Duquesne himself probably based his own description on an earlier one. No specimen of the hermit has ever been prepared. The two individuals Carre attempted to send to the royal menagerie in France did not survive captivity. The official and author Auguste Billiard , who lived on Réunion (then Île Bourbon ) from 1817 to 1820 , argued in 1822 that the French administrator Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais had sent a “hermit” to France from Réunion around 1740 . Since the Réunionibis was probably already extinct by this time, the bird in question could actually have been a Rodrigues solitary.

The only contemporary author who made specific reference to the “Dodos” of Réunion was the Dutch seaman Willem Ysbrandsz. Bontekoe , although he didn't mention their coloring:

“There were also dod-eersen ( old Dutch for dodos) that had small wings. Far from flying, they were so fat that they could barely walk, and when they tried to run they dragged their underside across the ground. "

Bontekoe was shipwrecked off Réunion in 1618, returned to Holland in 1625, but did not publish his report until 1646.

Early interpretation

Artistic reconstruction of a Réunion hermit by Hermann Schlegel (1854)

In the 1770s, the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon wrote that the dodo inhabited both Mauritius and Réunion. It is unclear why he included Réunion, but he also mentioned reports of the Rodrigues solitaire and a third bird ("Oiseaux de Nazareth (Nazar bird)" now considered a dodo) in the same section. The English naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland had discussed the old descriptions of the Réunion hermit in his 1848 book The Dodo and Its Kindred and found that they differed from the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire. The Belgian scientist Edmond de Selys-Longchamps coined the scientific name Apterornis solitarius for the Réunion hermit in 1848 and thus made him a type of the genus, in which he also included two other birds of the Mascarene , which are only known from contemporary reports, the Mauritius rail and the Réunion purple chicken . Since the name Apterornis had already been used by Richard Owen for the New Zealand genus Aptornis and the other earlier names were also invalid, Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte coined the new binomial Ornithaptera borbonica in 1854 (Bourbon was the original French name for Réunion). Hermann Schlegel placed the Réunion hermit in the same genus as the Dodo in 1854 and called it Didus apterornis . He reconstructed it strictly according to contemporary traditions, which resulted in an ibis or stork-like bird instead of a dodo. Since it was considered congeneric with the dodo, the Réunion hermit was also considered a member of the Dididae family (dodos and solitaires) for a long time.

In 1856, William Coker presented a 17th-century painting of a white dodo surrounded by ducks. The artist was later identified as the Dutchman Pieter Withoos, and many eminent naturalists of the 19th century later assumed that the picture represented the white solitaire of Réunion, a hypothesis originally proposed by ornithologist John Gould . At the same time, several similar paintings of white dodos by Pieter Holsteyn the Younger were discovered in the Netherlands. In 1869, Alfred Newton thought Withoos' drawing from Bontekoe's notes was a live Réunion dodo brought to Holland and established the blunt beak by shortening its beak to prevent people from being injured. Newton also ignored the inconsistencies between the illustrations and descriptions, particularly the long, thin beak suggested in a contemporary depiction.

Frohawk's artistic reconstruction of a white dodo based on the dodo painting by Wittekoos (from W. Rothschild: Extinct Birds , 1907)
Frohawk's artistic reconstruction of a Réunion hermit based on descriptions by Sieur Dubois from 1674 (from W. Rothschild: Extinct Birds , 1907)

Newton's words greatly strengthened the confirmation of this hypothesis among his peers, and some went further by adding more and more material. According to the Dutch zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans , the discrepancies between the paintings and the old descriptions were explained by the fact that the drawings showed female specimens and the species therefore exhibited a distinct sexual dimorphism . For Walter Rothschild , the yellow color of the wings was due to the albinism of this particular specimen, as the wings were described as black in the ancient records of the Réunion hermit.

Until the early 20th century, amid speculation, scientists claimed that many other paintings depicted white dodos and that even physical remains were from white dodos. Some scholars believed that the Réunion hermit of the ancient descriptions was more of a species similar to the Rodrigues solitaire. Rothschild commissioned the British artist Frederick William Frohawk to draw the Réunion hermit both as a white dodo based on the Withoos painting and as a separate bird based on the description of the French traveler Sieur Dubois from 1674 for his book Extinct Birds from 1907. In 1953, the Japanese ornithologist Hachisuka referred to the white dodos in the paintings as Victoriornis imperialis and the hermit of the old travelogues as Ornithaptera solitarius .

Modern interpretation

Until the late 1980s, belief in the existence of a white dodo on Réunion was the orthodox viewpoint, and few researchers questioned the connection between the reports of the Réunion hermit and the dodo drawings. They pointed out that without solid evidence like fossils, no conclusions can be drawn and that nothing suggests that the white dodos in the pictures have anything to do with Reunion. In 1970 the American ornithologist Robert W. Storer suspected that if such remains were found, they would not belong to the dodos or even the pigeons.

The first subfossil bird remains on Réunion were found in 1974 and assigned to a stork, Ciconia sp., By the British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles . The remains were found in a cave, suggesting that they were brought there and eaten by early settlers. It has been speculated that the remains could have come from a large, mysterious bird described by Leguat and referred to by some ornithologists as Leguat's Giant . From today's point of view, Leguat's Giant represents a locally extinct flamingo population on Réunion. 1987 by the French paleontologists was Cécile Mourer-Chauviré and François Moutou subfossiles material of a latter day extinct Ibisart of Reunion as Borbonibis latipes described and a close relationship to Waldrapp and smooth neck Rapp the genus Geronticus suspected. The holotype , a tarsometatarsus , was discovered in the Grotte de l'Autel near Saint-Gilles on Réunion.

At the end of 1987, after the description of Borbonibis latipes was published , the English biologist Anthony S. Cheke wrote to François Moutou to note that he and Cecile Mourer-Chauviré had finally found the enigmatic "solitaire". This advice was taken up and published in 1995 by Mourer-Chauviré, Roger Bour and Sonia Ribes. It was also assigned to the genus Threskiornis , which was now combined with the type epitheton solitarius from the binomial for the Réunion hermit from 1848 described by de Sélys-Longchamps. The authors pointed out that the contemporary descriptions corresponded more to the appearance and behavior of an ibis than a member of the Raphinae, especially since a fragment of a comparatively short and straight ibis mandible was discovered in 1994 and because ibis remains were abundant in some places.

Painting: "Landscape with Orpheus and the Animals" by Roelant Savery (around 1611)

The possible origin of the paintings with white dodos of the 17th century was investigated by the Spanish biologist Arturo Valledor de Lozoya in 2003 and independently by Anthony S. Cheke and Julian Pender Hume in 2004. The Withoos and Holsteyn paintings are clearly derived from each other, and Withoos likely traced his dodo from one of Holsteyn's works, as these were likely to have been made at an earlier date. All later pictures with white dodos should be based on these pictures. According to De Lozoya, these images themselves seem to have been derived from a white dodo in a painting titled "Landscape with Orpheus and the Animals" made by Roelant Savery around 1611. The dodo was apparently based on a stuffed specimen from Prague; a Walghvogel (Old Dutch for Dodo), which was described as "dyed dirty white" and mentioned in an inventory of the Prague collection of Emperor Rudolf II , with whom Savery was under contract at the time (1607-1611). Savery's later dodo paintings all show grayish birds, possibly because he had seen a common specimen by then. Cheke and Hume concluded that the painted specimen was white due to albinism and that this peculiarity was the reason it was collected in Mauritius and brought to Europe. Valledor de Lozoya instead suggested that the light plumage was a feature of a juvenile bird, a result of bleaching old specimens, or simply an artistic freedom. In 2018, Jolyon C. Parish and Anthony C. Cheke suggested that the painting was instead realized after 1614 or even after 1626, based on some of the motifs.

Fossil remains of dodo-like birds have never been found on Réunion. Some later literature sources criticize the Reunion hermit's ibis identity and even consider the "white dodo" to be a valid species. British author Errol Fuller agrees that the 17th century paintings do not depict Reunion dodos, but doubted that the subfossil remains of the ibis are closely related to reports of solitaires. He noted that there is no evidence that the extinct ibis survived until the arrival of Europeans on Réunion. Cheke and Hume have rejected such views as mere "belief" and "hope" in the existence of a dodo on the island.

evolution

The volcanic island of Réunion is three million years old, while Mauritius and Rodrigues, with each of their flightless dodo and solitary species, are eight to ten million years old. It is therefore unlikely that Réunion could have been colonized by flightless birds from these islands and that only flightable species have relatives on the island. Three million years are enough to develop inability to fly or poor flight skills in bird species on Réunion. But such species would have been wiped out by the eruption of the Piton des Neiges volcano 300,000 to 180,000 years ago. Most of the species that existed in modern times would therefore probably be descendants of animals that had repopulated the island from Africa or Madagascar after this event , which would not be sufficient for the inability to fly.

In 1995, a morphological study by Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues suggested that the closest relatives of the Réunion ibis are the sacred ibis ( Threskiornis aethiopicus ) from Africa and the spiny ibis ( Threskiornis spinicollis ) from Australia. It has also been suggested that it was most closely related to the Hellaugenibis ( Threskiornis bernieri ) from Madagascar and thus ultimately of African origin.

features

Contemporary reports described the species with white and gray plumage that blends into yellow, with black wing tips and tail feathers, a long neck and legs, and limited flight opportunities. Dubois' report of 1674 is the most detailed contemporary description of the bird and was translated by Strickland in 1848:

"Solitaires. These birds are so named because they are always alone. The size of a large goose, they are white with black wing tips and tail. The tail feathers resemble those of an ostrich; the neck is long and the bill resembles that of a woodcock but longer; the legs and feet resemble those of turkeys. This bird uses the opportunity to run as it flies very little. "

According to Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues, the plumage was probably similar to that of the sacred ibis and the spiny ibis, which in these species is also predominantly white and glossy black. In the breeding season, the ornamental back feathers and the wing tips of the sacred ibis look similar to the feathers of an ostrich, reminiscent of Dubois' description. Likewise, a subfossil mandible found in 1994 showed that the Reunionibi's beak was relatively short and straight for an ibis, which corresponds to Dubois' woodcock comparison. Cheke and Hume assume that the French word (bécasse) from Dubois' original description, mostly translated as “woodcock”, could also mean “oystercatcher”, another bird with a long, straight but somewhat more robust beak. They also pointed out that the last sentence is mistranslated and actually means that the bird could be caught by running after it. The light coloring of the plumage, mentioned by some authors, can be related to the iridescence as seen in the spiny ibis.

Subfossil material from the Réunion ibis suggests that it was more robust and likely much heavier, and had a larger head than the sacred ibis and the spiny ibis. Nevertheless, he resembled them in most of the characteristics. According to Hume, it would not have been taller than 65 cm, which corresponds to the body length of the Holy Ibis. Rough appendages on the wing bones of the Réunionibi resemble those of birds that use their wings in battle. It may have been flightless, but that left no significant osteological mark. Complete skeletons were not collected, but only one feature of the known sternum elements suggests a decrease in flight ability. The coracoid is elongated and the radius and ulna are robust, as in flightless birds, but a specific foramen (or opening) between a metacarpal bone and the alula is otherwise known only from flightless birds, such as some ratites, penguins, and several extinct species .

Behavior and way of life

Since contemporary reports as to whether the solitaire was flightless or had some ability to fly are contradicting itself, Mourer-Chauvire and colleagues hypothesized that this depends on seasonal fat cycles, which means that individuals fattened themselves during the cooler season but in the hot season were slim. He might be able to fly when he was slim, but not while he was fat. However, Dubois specifically stated that unlike most of the other birds of Réunion, the hermits did not have fat cycles. The only mention of the diet and the exact habitat of the Réunionibi comes from a report by the French cartographer Jean Feuilley from 1708, which is also the last confirmation of a living individual:

“Solitaires are the size of a medium-sized turkey and are gray and white in color. They live on top of the mountains. Their diet consists only of worms that they collect on the ground or in the ground. "

The diet and type of foraging described by Feuilley corresponds to that of an ibis, while dodos mainly fed on a frugivore diet. The species was called a land bird by Dubois, so it did not live in habitats typical of ibises such as wetlands. This is believed to be due to the fact that the ancestors of this species colonized Réunion before swamps were formed and therefore they had adapted to the available habitats.

Perhaps the Réunionibis was unable to spread to Mauritius because of the presence of the Mauritius railroad, which may have occupied a similar niche. It appears that the species lived at high altitudes and perhaps also had a limited range. Early visitor reports suggest the species has been sighted near its anchorage but has only been found in remote locations from 1667 onwards. The bird may have survived in the eastern lowlands until the 1670s. Although many reports from the late 17th century state that the bird was good to eat, Feuilley writes that its meat tasted bad. This may be because the Réunionibi's feeding behavior changed after it retreated to rougher, elevated terrain to escape pigs that destroyed its nests. Since it had limited flight capabilities, it probably nested on the ground.

die out

Wooded mountain peak on Réunion (2006)

As Réunion was increasingly populated by settlers, the Réunionibis was forced to retreat to the mountain peaks. Introduced predators such as cats and rats claimed many victims. The uncontrolled hunt also contributed, and several contemporary reports testify that the bird was widely hunted for its meat. In 1625, John Tatton described the bird's trustworthiness and how easy it was to hunt, as well as the large crowd he decimated:

“There are great numbers of land birds, both large and small, many pigeons, large parrots and the like; there is also a large white bird the size of a turkey, very fat and with wings so short that they prevent it from flying; he seems almost trusting, like all other birds, as he was never disturbed or startled by a shot. Our men beat them down with sticks and stones. Ten men could feed forty men in a single day. "

In 1671, the chronicler Jean-Jacques Melet described the slaughter of some bird species on the island and mentioned the culinary qualities of this species:

“Birds are so abundant and so trusting that there is no need to hunt with firearms, as they can easily be knocked down with a small stick or rod. During those five or six days that we were allowed to go into the forest, so many were killed that our general (A) was forced to forbid anyone to walk more than a hundred paces out of the camp for fear of the entire neighborhood would be destroyed. Because it was enough just to catch a live bird and let it scream to attract in a moment whole flocks to sit on the men present, so that one could often kill hundreds without moving from the place. But since it would have been impossible to extinguish such a large amount, permission to kill was given again, which was a cause for great joy for everyone, because there was very good food without any effort. "

The last recorded mention of the Réunion hermit was that of Feuilley in 1708, suggesting that the species was likely extinct sometime in the early 18th century. In the 1820s, the French navigator Louis de Freycinet asked an old slave about drontes (Old Dutch word for dodo) and was told that the bird existed around Saint-Joseph when his father was a child. That would probably have been a century earlier, but this representation can also be unreliable. Cheke and Hume suspect that feral cats first hunted wild animals in the lowlands and later invaded higher inland areas, which were probably the last retreats of the Réunionibi, where it was inaccessible for pigs. It is believed that the species was extinct between 1710 and 1715.

Remarks

(A)Jacob de La Haye, commander of La Navarre of the French East India Company's fleet, which anchored off Réunion in 1671.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Threskiornis solitarius in the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species 2018.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2017. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q J. P. Hume, AS Cheke: The white dodo of Réunion Island: Unraveling a scientific and historical myth (PDF). Archives of Natural History. 31 (1), 2004, pp. 57-79. doi : 10.3366 / anh.2004.31.1.57
  3. ↑ a b c d H. E. Strickland, AG Melville: The Dodo and Its Kindred; or the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and Other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon. London: Reeve, Benham and Reeve, 1848, pp. 57-62.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f J. P. Hume: Extinct Birds. (2nd revised edition), Bloomsbury, London, 2017, pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-1-4729-3744-5 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g J. P. Hume, AS Cheke: Lost Land of the Dodo: An Ecological History of Mauritius, Réunion & Rodrigues. New Haven and London, 2008, pp. 30-43. ISBN 978-0-7136-6544-4 .
  6. ^ W. Bontekoe van Hoorn: Journael ofte Gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe van de Oost-Indian Reyse van Willem Ysbrantz. Jooft Hartgers, Amsterdam, 1646, p. 76. (Dutch)
  7. ↑ E. d. Selys-Longchamps: Resumé concernant les oiseaux brévipennes mentionnés dans l'ouvrage de M. Strickland sur le dodo. Revue Zoologique, 1848
  8. ↑ SL Olson: A synopsis on the fossil Rallidae (PDF). In: Rails of the World - A Monograph of the Family Rallidae. Boston: Codline, 1977, pp. 357-358. ISBN 978-0-87474-804-8 . (Mentioned in the section of Aphanapteryx bonasia )
  9. ↑ a b c C. Mourer-Chauvire, R. Bour, S. Ribes, F. Moutou: Avian paleontology at the close of the 20th century: The avifauna of Réunion Island (Mascarene Islands) at the time of the arrival of the first Europeans . Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 89, 1999, pp. 8-11. hdl : 10088/2005 .
  10. ^ Hermann Schlegel: Ook een Woordje over den Dodo (Didus ineptus) en zijne Verwanten . Verslagen en Mededeelingen of the Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen 2, 1854, pp. 232–256. (Dutch)
  11. ↑ a b c d e Walter Rothschild: Extinct Birds. Hutchinson & Co, London, 1907, pp. 171-176.
  12. ^ Alfred Newton: XIII. On a picture supposed to represent the didine bird of the island of Bourbon (Réunion) . The Transactions of the Zoological Society of London. 6 (6), 1868, pp. 373-376. doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.1868.tb00581.x .
  13. ^ Walter Rothschild: On one of the four original pictures from life of the Réunion or white Dodo (PDF). The Ibis. 36 (2), 1919, pp. 78-79. doi : 10.2307 / 4073093 .
  14. ↑ Masauji Hachisuka: The dodo and kindred birds: or, the extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands HF & G. Witherby, Ltd., London, 1953, pp. 43-44.
  15. ↑ a b c Arturo Valledor de Lozoya: An unnoticed painting of a white Dodo . Journal of the History of Collections. 15 (2), 2003, 201-210. doi : 10.1093 / jhc / 15.2.201 .
  16. ↑ James C. Greenway: Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1967, p. 111. ISBN 978-0-486-21869-4 .
  17. ^ Rober W. Storer: Independent evolution of the dodo and the solitaire. Auk 87, 1970, pp. 369-370
  18. ^ Graham S. Cowles: The fossil record . In: Anthony W. Diamond (Ed.): Studies of Mascarene Island Birds. Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 90-100. doi : 10.1017 / CBO9780511735769.004 . ISBN 978-0-511-73576-9 .
  19. ↑ C. Mourer-Chauviré, F. Moutou: Découverte d'une forme récemment éteinte d'ibis endémique insulaire de l'île de la Réunion Borbonibis latipes n. Gen. N. Sp. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. Série D. 305 (5), 1987, pp. 419-423. (French)
  20. ^ Cécile Mourer-Chauviré, Roger Bour & Sonia Ribes: Position systémathique du solitaire de la Réunion: Nouvelle interprétation basée sur les restes fossiles et les récits des anciens voyaguers Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences sér. 2A, 320, 1995, pp. 1125–1131 (French)
  21. ↑ a b c d e C. Mourer-Chauviré, R. Bour, S. Ribes: Was the solitaire of Réunion an Ibis? Nature 373 (6515), 1995, p. 568. doi : 10.1038 / 373568a0
  22. ↑ JC Parish, AS Cheke: A newly-discovered early depiction of the Dodo (Aves: Columbidae: Raphus cucullatus) by Roelandt Savery, with a note on another previously unnoticed Savery Dodo . Historical Biology, 2018, pp. 1-10. doi : 10.1080 / 08912963.2018.1457658
  23. ↑ a b c Errol Fuller: Dodo - From Extinction to Icon. Harper Collins, London, 2002, pp. 168-172. ISBN 978-0-00-714572-0 .
  24. ↑ Errol Fuller: Extinct Birds (2nd revised edition). Comstock, New York, 2001, pp. 385-386. ISBN 978-0-8014-3954-4 .
  25. ↑ C. Mourer-Chauviré, R. Bour, S. Ribes: Recent avian extinctions on Réunion (Mascarene islands) from paleontological and historical sources . In: Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club (126A), 2006, pp. 40-48.