#laterallus

Ruddy Crake (Laterallus ruber), male, family Rallidae, order Gruiformes, Isla Cozumel, Mexico

[2983/11080] Dot-winged crake - Laterallus spiloptera

Note: Clements places this bird in the genus Porzana.

Order: Gruiformes Family: Rallidae (rails)

A secretive marsh bird faces existential threat from rising seas | The Guardian

There may be fewer than a few thousand of the eastern black rail left. Its habitat is shrinking because of development, pollution and global heating. In time, the salty gulf will inundate this field in south-west Louisiana. In nearby Texas, some black rails probably lost their homes to Hurricane Harvey, which dumped more rain because of rising temperatures.

The bird’s plight also highlights the challenges the government is already facing in safeguarding species against climate breakdown and the tension between fighting global heating and the wants of industry. Soon Donald Trump’s interior department will overhaul the rules for protecting species, with changes that could make it even harder to consider the current and long-term threats of global heating. Many campaigners see this as a potential disaster with far-reaching implications beyond any single species.

By the end of the year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to list the black rail as threatened, a move that could protect its dwindling numbers but has taken nine years to complete. That’s faster than the average timeline of 12 years but slow enough that the rail population has continued to significantly decline.

“The numbers are not good, and frankly we’re on the cusp of learning. A lot of the recent black rail work has happened in the last decade,” said Woody Woodrow, a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Texas. “It’s probably the least studied and least understood bird in North America.”

Now the bird could theoretically go extinct before scientists know much about it, Woodrow added.

Inktober Day 7: Shy

Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) 

Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis), family Rallidae, order Gruiformes, Eastern U.S.

ENDANGERED.

Researchers find the origin of an isolated bird species on South Atlantic island

By wings or maybe riding on debris, that's how a now-flightless and rare species of tiny birds likely got to Inaccessible Island, an aptly named small island of volcanic origin in the middle of the South Atlantic. And it turns out that the bird, a rail, listed scientifically as Atlantisia rogersi, needs a name change, says Martin Stervander, a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon. His four-member team has found genetic evidence that ties the bird to a South American species.

Inaccessible Island, the westernmost of three islands in the Tristan Archipelago, is the only place in the world where this species of rail lives. The island, formed by a now-extinct volcano 3 to 6 million years ago, is located roughly 3,600 kilometers (2,250 miles) east of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and about 2,800 kilometers (1,750 miles) west of Cape Town, South Africa.

The birds were first described in 1923 by British surgeon Percy Lowe, a bird-lover who then headed the ornithology collections at the British Museum. He placed the birds in the genus Atlantisia, a reference to mythical Atlantis, and named the species rogersi after the Rev. H.M.C. Rogers, a chaplain on nearby island Tristan da Cunha, who was the first to collect specimens. Lowe surmised that the birds walked to the island on a since-sunken land bridge from Africa or South America, but the later discovery of plate tectonics ruled out that idea, Stervander said.

"We found obviously that the birds did not walk by foot," he said. "They flew or were assisted by floating debris. Whether they flew all the way or were swept off by a storm and then landed on debris, we can't say. In any case, they managed to make it from the mainland of South America to Inaccessible Island."

Using modern sequencing of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA and phylogenetic methods, Stervander's team tied the island's rail to the South American dot-winged crake, a rail species known as Porzana spiloptera. The split came 1.5 million years ago, with the rail colonizing Inaccessible Island in a single migration, the team concluded in a paper put online Oct. 12 by the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.

Their genetics also make them relatives of black rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) found in the Americas and likely the Galapagos crake (Laterallus spilonota), which also has a reduced flight ability. Stervander's team recommends that the Inaccessible Island rail species be reclassified in the genus Laterallus as are the related species.