New owl species, and interesting example of species discrimination based on owl
calls:
Full article:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0053712
Media:
Rinjani scops owl: New owl species discovered in Indonesia
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2013/02/13/rinjani-scops-owl-new-owl-species-discovered-in-indonesia/
A new species of owl called the Rinjani scops owl has been discovered, and it’s
unique to the tiny Indonesian island of Lombok.
Until fairly recently, it was common practice for scientists to
identify owl species based largely on their plumage and morphology. Both
features are important in distinguishing all kinds of birds, but can be
unreliable, as owls often change their colouring to better blend in
with their environment. The same species of spocs owl living in
different geographic regions can have noticeably different plumage
colours and patterns, which had led to what Smithsonian ornithologist
Joe T Marshall referred to in 1978 as “several embarrassing misalignments”.
Marshall had been sent to Thailand in the late ‘70s to fix up some
messy taxonomy of the island’s endemic owls, and it was here that he
became the first researcher to propose that vocalistions were a more
reliable identifier of scops owl species than variations in morphology
and plumage. Using this new technique, he went on to completely revise
the classification of the scops owl genus Otus.
Since then, recordings of owl vocalisations have become a big part of
identifying owl species, and this is how George Sangster from the
Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural
History and Ben King from the Department of Zoology at Stockholm
University discovered the Rinjani scops owl of Lombok, and named it
after Indonesia’s second highest volcano, Gunung Rinjani.
A pure coincidence saw both Sanger and King travel to Lombok in 2003
to record and study the vocalisations of a local population of nightjars
to identify whether they belonged to a potentially new species that
occurs on the neighbouring islands of Flores and Sumba, or to the large-tailed
nightjar species (Caprimulgus macrurus)
with which it had long been associated. It turns out this was a
population of large-tailed nightjars, but while they were there, Sanger
and King picked up on some owl vocalisations they had never heard
before.
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