Scientists Realized a Species of Bird Is Really Thirteen Different Species

Kaleigh Rogers

December 9, 2016 // 03:50 PM EST 

But it turns out the birds that were once believed to all belong to the same species—the red-bellied pitta—are actually 13 distinct species, found around Southeast Asia. 

Image: BirdLife International 

This is particularly significant because when they were all lumped together, conservationists weren’t worried about their population numbers. But now that the differences have been teased apart, it’s become apparent that three of these species are actually globally threatened. One species is also considered near threatened, according to BirdLife International, a bird conservation organization, which is the Red List authority for birds for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

“The birds do look alike but there are significant differences between individual taxa,” explained Nigel Collar, a Leventis Fellow in conservation biology with BirdLife International, who helped to identify the different species. 

The first clue came from a team of geneticists who, in 2013, published a paper that showed the red-bellied pitta could be as many as 17 distinct species, based on their genetic diversity. (One factor that can help determine that two animals are separate species is if they are unable to successfully interbreed.) Collar explained that there’s a bit of debate over how genetics is used to determine whether a species is distinct, but the evidence convinced him and his colleagues to take a second look at the pitta. 

“We sat down in British Museum and got out all the specimen and evaluated these slightly different or fairly different subspecies,” Collar said. “So you’re comparing the differences: maybe one has a big bill and another has a small bill; a large wing or a short wing.” 

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Buzzards do not pose a risk to animals, bird charity says

John Monaghan

07 December, 2016 01:00 

AN Irish bird conservation charity has hit out at reports that buzzards have been targetting animals including dogs, cats and rabbits in a series of attacks.

Birdwatch Ireland described recent media claims in Tipperary as scaremongering and "highly misleading and misinformed".

According to some reports buzzards were responsible for attacks where "a number of terriers having been taken, leading to call for protection orders to be lifted."

It claimed that one Yorkshire terrier was attacked twice and killed, while one TD had complained of buzzards circling over his head.

One report said: "There are also concerns that with the increase in buzzards, the spring lambing season after Christmas could be an ideal hunting ground for them - but a very costly one for sheep owners."

A spokesman for BirdWatch Ireland said the species, which has re-colonised rapidly in recent years, posed no threat to sheep or lambs.

"This is a myth which refuses to die in some quarters, and it needs to stop. By preying on crows, rats and other pests, buzzards in reality bring a number of clear benefits to our sheep farmers.

"Buzzards also prey on rabbits, but are incapable of killing prey larger than this. Contrary to claims in the article, buzzards pose no threat whatsoever to the survival of Ireland’s hare population."

The charity said that while other countries in Europe have higher buzzard populations than Ireland "there does not seem to be any comparable scaremongering or media-induced panic and misinformation about threats to pets there."

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Yuletide greetings

Wishing you all a Merry Yuletide

New study doubles the estimate of bird species in the world

December 12, 2016 

New research led by the American Museum of Natural History suggests that there are about 18,000 bird species in the world—nearly twice as many as previously thought. The work focuses on "hidden" avian diversity—birds that look similar to one another, or were thought to interbreed, but are actually different species. Recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study has serious implications for conservation practices. 

"We are proposing a major change to how we count diversity," said Joel Cracraft, an author of the study and a curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Ornithology. "This new number says that we haven't been counting and conserving species in the ways we want."

Birds are traditionally thought of as a well-studied group, with more than 95 percent of their global species diversity estimated to have been described. Most checklists used by bird watchers as well as by scientists say that there are roughly between 9,000 and 10,000 species of birds. But those numbers are based on what's known as the "biological species concept," which defines species in terms of what animals can breed together.

"It's really an outdated point of view, and it's a concept that is hardly used in taxonomy outside of birds," said lead author George Barrowclough, an associate curator in the Museum's Department of Ornithology.

For the new work, Cracraft, Barrowclough, and their colleagues at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and the University of Washington examined a random sample of 200 bird species through the lens of morphology—the study of the physical characteristics like plumage pattern and color, which can be used to highlight birds with separate evolutionary histories. This method turned up, on average, nearly two different species for each of the 200 birds studied. This suggests that bird biodiversity is severely underestimated, and is likely closer to 18,000 species worldwide.

The researchers also surveyed existing genetic studies of birds, which revealed that there could be upwards of 20,000 species. But because the birds in this body of work were not selected randomly—and, in fact, many were likely chosen for study because they were already thought to have interesting genetic variation—this could be an overestimate. The authors argue that future taxonomy efforts in ornithology should be based on both methods.

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