Chatham Islands rail
| Chatham Islands rail | |
|---|---|
| File:Cabalus modestus.jpg | |
| Illustration by Keulemans | |
| Scientific classification Edit this classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gruiformes |
| Family: | Rallidae |
| Genus: | Cabalus |
| Species: | †C. modestus
|
| Binomial name | |
| †Cabalus modestus (Hutton, 1872)
| |
| Synonyms | |
| |
The Chatham Islands rail (Cabalus modestus), also known as the Chatham rail, is an extinct flightless species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, in the Chatham archipelago of New Zealand.[3] The Chatham Islands rail was first discovered on Mangere in 1871, and 26 specimens collected there are known from museum collections. Its Māori name was "mātirakahu".[2]
Taxonomy
[edit | edit source]_(cropped).jpg){kind=link}
The Chatham Islands rail and the Dieffenbach's rail, both extinct and flightless, were sympatric on the Chatham Islands. Their sympatry suggests parallel evolution after separate colonisation of the Chatham Islands by different rail ancestors.[4] A genetic analysis from 1997 suggested that the two were sister taxa.[5] However more recent genetic analysis finds them to not be closely related within the Gallirallus radiation, with a 2014 analysis finding the Chatham Islands rail being sister taxon to the possibly extinct New Caledonian rail instead.[6]
Extinction
[edit | edit source]It became extinct on the island between 1896 and 1900. The species is also known from 19th century bones from Chatham and Pitt Islands. It is likely to have occurred in scrubland and tussock grass. Its extinction was presumably caused by predation by rats and cats (which were introduced in the 1890s), habitat destruction to provide sheep pasture (which destroyed all the island's bush and tussock grass by 1900), and from grazing by goats and rabbits. On Chatham and Pitt Islands, Olson has suggested that its extinction resulted from competition with the larger Dieffenbach's rail (also extinct), but this has been refuted later when the two species have been shown to have been sympatric on Mangere.[7][8]
- Preserved skin
- Various views of the skull of the Chatham Islands rail
-
Lateral view
-
Dorsal view
-
Ventral view
-
Oblique view
See also
[edit | edit source]- Hawkins's rail, another extinct flightless rail endemic to the Chatham Islands.
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Marchant and Higgins (1993)
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Trewick SA. 1997. Flightlessness and phylogeny amongst endemic rails (Aves: Rallidae) of the New Zealand region. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 352:429–446.
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Tennyson and Millener (1994)
- ^ Olson (1975c)
External links
[edit | edit source]
- Error creating thumbnail: File missing Media related to Lua error in Module:Commons_link at line 62: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). at Wikimedia Commons
- Specimens from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
- Specimens from the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira
Lua error in Module:Taxonbar at line 165: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
.png){kind=link}