San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant
| San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant | ||||||||||||
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| Pyrocephalus dubius | ||||||||||||
| Gould & Gray, GR , 1839 |
The San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant ( Pyrocephalus dubius ) is an extinct species of passerine bird from the tyrant family . It was previously considered a subspecies of the ruby tyrant ( Pyrocephalus rubinus ), but a study from 2016 showed that the genetic distance of the ruby tyrant taxa of the Galapagos Islands to the mainland form is so great that a species status is to be supported. This view was followed in December 2016 Birdlife International and the IUCN and classified the San Cristóbal Vermilion Flycatcher in the category "extinct" ( extinct ). It was endemic to the island of San Cristóbal in the Galápagos Archipelago, where it was discovered in 1835 during Charles Darwin's Galapagos expedition. John Gould described the taxon as a separate species in 1839.
description
The San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant reached a length of 10.8 to 11 centimeters. In the adult male, the skull was shiny dark vermilion. The underside was light red, the color on the chest a little more intense and on the throat a little lighter. The chin was reddish white. The reins, the ear covers and the top were generally dark brown. The tips of the wing covers, the hems of the arm wings and the outer tail feathers were light gray-brown. In the adult female, the forehead and skull were streaked ocher-tan and dark brown. An ocher-tan eye streak ran from the nostrils to the back of the head. The ear covers, neck, back, shoulder feathers and small wing covers were uniformly dark brown. The rump , the upper tail-coverts and the broad tips of the large and middle wing coverts were lighter with a yellow-brown tint. The arm covers were light beige-gray and the tips were broadly lined with beige-white-gray. The cheeks, chin and throat were light tan. The rest of the underside was dark tan.
status
During a visit to San Cristóbal in 1929 the ornithologist Albert Kenrick Fisher found the San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant often along the dry west coast to the village of Progreso in the highlands. Over the next 60 years, much of the original vegetation was displaced by invasive plant species. The insects that the San Cristóbal Ruby Tyrant fed on disappeared, so that by 1988 it was considered a great rarity. During a six-month expedition in 1998, no more specimens could be found. Researchers suspect that introduced bird diseases such as birdpox and avian malaria are another reason for its disappearance .
literature
- David W. Steadman and Steven Zousmer: Galapagos: Discovery on Darwin's Islands. Smithsonian Institution Press., 1988, ISBN 0874748828 , pp. 182-183
- Robert Ridgway: Descriptions of twenty-two new species of birds from the Galapagos Islands Online 1894
- Martin Wikelski, Johannes Foufopoulos, Hernan Vargas and Howard Snell: Galápagos Birds and Diseases: Invasive Pathogens as Threats for Island Species ( PDF full text , 384 kB) 2004
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ O. Carmi, CC Witt, A. Jaramillo, and JP Dumbacher. 2016. Phylogeography of the Vermilion Flycatcher species complex: Multiple speciation events, shifts in migratory behavior, and an apparent extinction of a Galápagos-endemic bird species. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 102 (2016) 152-173.