HANGZHOU, May 23 (Xinhua) -- The
Chinese crested tern, the world's most endangered tern species, is in danger of
hybridizing with a sister species because of its small population, said Chinese
ornithologists.
The hybridization of two closely
related species may erode their gene pools and accelerate the rate of the rare
bird's extinction, said Chen Shuihua, deputy director of the Zhejiang Museum of
Natural History in east China's Zhejiang Province.
He said the museum and two other
Chinese institutes have collected non-invasive DNA samples from five Chinese
crested terns for genetic conservation studies, as they have observed that
hybridization is likely to occur between the rare bird and its more abundant
cousin, the great crested tern.
The white migrating bird with a
black beak was first spotted in 1861, and has remained small in number, listed
as "critically endangered" by the IUCN Red Data Book with fewer than
100 individuals globally.
Chen said that at all of the
bird's breeding sites in the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, nests of the Chinese
crested tern were found within great crested tern colonies.
He said although the two species
are members of the same Sternini tribe, they diverged about a million years
ago.
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