On February 9th, Dr. Niels Krabbe and Dr. Daniel Cadena from Fundación ProAves Colombia published in Zootaxa a revision to the Paramo Tapaculo. They identifed multiple taxa (three differentiated lineages), including a new subspecies – Scytalopus opacus androstictus – from southern Ecuador and northernmost Peru. The original “Paramo Tapaculo” has changed its name to "Paramillo Tapaculo" (Scytalopus canus) and is now only known from a highly restricted area of timberline vegetation on Paramo de Paramillo and Paramo del Sol. The subspecies Scytalopus canus opacus has been given species ranking and given the name Paramo Tapaculo (Scytalopus opacus) which occurs across the Northern Andes of Colombia (except the Western Cordillera), Ecuador and northernmost Peru.

  Paramillo Tapaculo | ProAves Colombia

At present the Paramillo Tapaculo is only known from Páramo de Paramillo and Páramo de Frontino. It may occur elsewhere in the Cordillera Occidental of Colombia. The Paramillo Tapaculo is restricted to a narrow swath of treeline vegetation (scrub, stunted trees and Polylepis woodland) situated between montane forest and Páramo grasslands that is often just hundreds of meters wide. While locally common, the estimated area of suitable habitat within the known range of the Paramillo Tapaculo is 3 km² in total. Only 0.1 km² is effectively protected by the Fundación ProAves Colibri del Sol Bird Reserve.

According to ProAves Colombia, the Paramillo Tapaculo has not been assessed by IUCN. Given the estimated extent of occurrence and observed decline in the extent and quality of habitat, the Paramillo Tapaculo probably warrants IUCN Critically Endangered status with immediate efforts to assess its population and implement actions to assist its survival.

Listen to the song of the Paramillo Tapaculo:

Paramillo Tapaculo

For more songs follow the Xeno-Canto link

The Government of Colombia announced last night that it was creating a new national park at the request of the local indigenous community. This is a major step forward in the complicated relationship between conservationists and indigenous groups.

Black Curassow

The Yaigojé Apaporis Park – was created to safeguard an area of more than 1,056,523 hectares (about 2,610,725 acres) of forest at the intersection of the Amazon Basin and the Guiana Shield, and will be managed by the indigenous groups who inhabit the Connecticut-sized area.

The area – which straddles the banks of the Caquetá River and its tributary, the Apaporis River – is home to the Tanimuka,  Letuama, Makuna, Yuhup, Barasano, Itana, Eduria and Tatuyo ethnic groups, and was previously classified as an indigenous reserve. However, this status – under existing Colombian legislation – did not provide the communities with the power to protect their land when a Canadian gold-mining company began prospecting in the area two years ago.

So the communities looked to a solution that would increase their rights to oversee the future of the land – the creation of a national park. They worked with Conservation International and the Gaia Amazonas Foundation to appeal to the country’s National Parks Unit to better protect the region’s resources.

Fabio Arjona, Executive Director of Conservation International in Colombia said: “The announcement is a hugely significant step forward for conservation, both globally and in Colombia. It has helped to break-down barriers that have existed between conservation and indigenous groups – who initially resisted efforts to increase protection in their forests because of concerns that it would reduce their ability to manage the lands as they wish to. But in creating this new park we have worked together to create an area that protects both the rights of indigenous people and this hugely important area of forest.”

The area’s lowland forests have great biodiversity and shelter unique and threatened species such as the Black Curassow (Crax alector), the brown wooly monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha) and the endemic Apaporis river caiman  (Caiman crocodilus apaporiensis).

www.conservation.org

Photo: ©XKD

Rediscovered Bird Species in Peru and the Neotropical Region

This is the second part in a three part blog series examining the phenomenon of rediscovering bird species that were once thought lost or extinct.

Rediscovered Bird Species in Peru:

White-winged Guan (Penelope albipennis)

The White-winged Guan is a classic example of rediscovered Neotropical avifauna. The species was described based on a specimen collected in the Tumbes mangroves, near the border between Peru and Ecuador by the Polish zoologist Władysław Taczanowski in 1876. It wasn’t seen again for nearly 100 years and it was thought extinct until the conservationist Gustavo del Solar rediscovered it in the dry forests of northern Peru with the help of local people. An initial assessment found that there were very few in the wild, so it was decided to start a captive breeding program. Subsequently White-winged Guan born into captivity have begun to be released into their native habitat, establishing new populations in surrounding forests.

White-winged Guan ©David Cook

White-masked Antbird (Pithys castaneus)

In 1938, Berlioz described a distinctive new species of antbird in the genus Pithys, from a single specimen collected by Ramon Olalla on September 16, 1937, at ‘‘Andoas, lower Pastaza, eastern Ecuador’’. This new species, the White-masked Antbird (Pithys castaneus), has remained one of the most intriguing mysteries of Neotropical ornithology for over 60 years. It was thought extinct until its rediscovery by Thomas Valqui on July 3, 2001, in the northwestern Morona River, Loreto, Peru.

Imperial Snipe (Gallinago imperialis)

In 1869, Sclater and Salvin described a large, richly colored snipe from a single specimen obtained from the Andes in the vicinity of Bogota, Colombia, and named it Gallinago imperialis. There were no records of this species until its rediscovery by John Terborgh in the summer of 1967 in the Cordillera de Vilcabamba, Peru. Later, in 1990 it was found again by Niels Krabbe, high on the volcano Pichincha in Ecuador.

Equatorial Graytail (Xenerpestes singularis)

This bird was described in 1885 from a single specimen collected by Stolzmann at Mapoto, Provincia Ampato, in the eastern Andes of Ecuador. It was re-discovered in September 1977 in the cloud forests of the department of San Martin in northern Peru by Ted Parker. Later the Equatorial Graytail was also found in other localities in the department of Cajamarca in Peru.

Yellow-browed Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus huallagae)

The Yellow-browed Toucanet was described from a single male specimen collected "on the trail to Utcubamba, in the Huallaga Valley, east of Tayabamba" Peru, on May 3, 1932, by Carriker. The specimen was collected from "a small band" of birds, the only individuals he saw in the area. The species was not seen again for 47 years, until 1979, when members of a Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science (LSUMZ) expedition found them while following Carriker’s trail.

Rediscovered Bird Species in the Neotropical Region:

Golden-crowned Manakin (Lepidotrix vilasboasi)

The Golden-crowned Manakin was first discovered by German scientist Helmut Sick in 1957, and was officially recognized as a species in 1959. On May 14, 2002, it was rediscovered after many years in Brazil. Fábio Olmos who, together with José Fernando Pacheco, rediscovered the species said: "We were thrilled to find the lost manakin – quite distinctive from other manakins." He added: "The local economy is based on logging and cattle-ranching on cleared land. The Brazilian government is encouraging colonization but has no way of controlling loggers, squatters, colonists and gold miners once access is created. Forest destruction will remain a major threat to the long-term survival of this beautiful bird and other wildlife of the area."

Golden-crowned Manakin ©Fabio Olmos

Pale-headed Brush-Finch (Atlapetes pallidiceps)

The Pale-headed Brush-finch is a bird endemic to the Rio Jubones Valley in Azuay Province, Ecuador. It went unrecorded for 30 years despite several searches at the localities where the species had been collected in the 1960s. In November 1998, a small population of 10-20 birds was rediscovered in a side valley of the Rio Jubones drainage. Today this small population is protected in a private reserve created for this species.

Fuertes’s Parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi)

On July 28, 2003, researchers of ProAves Colombia, supported by American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and the World Parrot Trust (WPT), rediscovered one of the world’s rarest parrots in the high Andes of Colombia confirming the survival of this long lost species. Colombian ornithologists Jorge Velasquez and Alonso Quevedo found a flock of 14 Fuertes’s Parrots in a remote area of the central Andes close to Los Nevados National Park. The species was originally described in 1911 by two bird collectors from the American Museum of Natural History in New York – Leo Miller and Arthur Allen.

Fuertes’s Parrot in Colombia ©ProAves Colombia

Kaempfer’s (Caatinga) Woodpecker (Celeus obrieni)

This species was first collected by E. Kaempfer on August 16, 1926, and deposited at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1973, the specimen was recognized as a subspecies of Rufous-headed Woodpecker, until a commission of the SACC’s classified it as a distinct species in 2003. On October 21, 2006, it was rediscovered by Advaldo Dias do Prado and co-workers when they mist-netted and photographed a male of this species at Goiatins, in the state of Tocantins.

Kaempfer’s Woodpecker ©Guilherme R C Silva

A special thanks to ProAves Colombia for the Fuertes’s Parrot photo. You can see more about their work to conserve Colombian avifauna here.

Last night I was finishing the first part of a series of posts about Lost and Extinct bird species when I saw this news on Neotropical Birds site:

“The Bogota Sunangel lived! – confirmed as valid species”

This small hummingbird is know only because a single specimen that was purchased on 1909 in Bogota. It was probably collected in the East Andes or Central Andes of Colombia, within a few hundred kilometers of the capital. Its true provenance is impossible to determine, however, as some ‘Bogotá’ trade-skins came from much further afield, at least as far away as Venezuela and Ecuador.

Until very recently they were discussions about his status as a species (see SACC prop. 57)

According to J. Kirchman et al.:

We use mtDNA sequence data to confirm that the controversial 100-year-old holotype of the Bogotá sunangel (Heliangelus zusii) represents a valid species. We demonstrate that H. zusii is genetically well differentiated from taxa previously hypothesized to have given rise to the specimen via hybridization. Phylogenetic analyses place H. zusii as sister to a clade of mid- to high-elevation Andean species currently placed in the genera Taphrolesbia and Aglaiocercus. Heliangelus zusii, presumed extinct, has never been observed in nature by biologists.

Although confirmed as a valid species, there seems to be little hope that the Bogota Sunangel survives.  But there always is the possibility that it persists in some poorly explored portion of the Andes. Now, at least, field ornithologists have renewed reason to search for this mysterious bird. If we assume an ecological similarity to other sunangels, it should be looked for in humid Andean forest and well-developed shrublands between 1,500 and 3,400 m, especially in remote portions of the Colombian cordilleras.

More birds are waiting to be studied © Bill Lynch

Immediately started to think about all the other species that are preserved in museums waiting for someone to carefully study them and confirm their validity as species.

If you want to know more about other “Lost” birds don´t miss my new blog series starting this afternoon.

References:

Kirchman, J., Christopher C. Witt, Jimmy A. McGuire, and Gary R. Graves (2009)
DNA from a 100-year-old holotype confirms the validity of a potentially extinct hummingbird species Biol Lett: rsbl.2009.0545v1-rsbl20090545

Graves, G. (1993) Relict of a Lost World: A new Species of Sunangel (TROCHILIDAE: Heliangelus) from Bogota. The Auk 110(1): 1-8.

All photos under Creative Commons License