Chatham rail
Illustration by Keulemans

Extinct (c.1900)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]

Extinct (c.1900) (NZ TCS)[2]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: Cabalus
Species:
†C. modestus
Binomial name
†Cabalus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)
Synonyms
  • Gallirallus modestus
  • Rallus modestus

The Chatham rail (Cabalus modestus) is an extinct flightless species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, in the Chatham archipelago of New Zealand.[3] The Chatham rail was first discovered on Mangere in 1871, and 26 specimens collected there are known from museum collections. Its Māori name was "mātirakahu".[2]

Taxonomy

Image of Cabalus modestus mount from the collection of Auckland Museum
Cabalus modestus mount from the collection of Auckland Museum
Illustration from 1907

The Chatham rail and the Dieffenbach's rail, both extinct and flightless, were sympatric on the Chatham Islands. Their sympatry suggests parallel evolution after separate colonisation of the Chatham Islands by different rail ancestors.[4] A genetic analysis from 1997 suggested that the two were sister taxa.[5] However more recent genetic analysis finds them to not be closely related within the Gallirallus radiation, with a 2014 analysis finding the Chatham rail being sister taxon to the possibly extinct New Caledonian rail instead.[6]

Taxidermied chick collected in 1872

Extinction

It became extinct on the island between 1896 and 1900. The species is also known from 19th century bones from Chatham and Pitt Islands. It is likely to have occurred in scrubland and tussock grass. Its extinction was presumably caused by predation by rats and cats (which were introduced in the 1890s), habitat destruction to provide sheep pasture (which destroyed all the island's bush and tussock grass by 1900), and from grazing by goats and rabbits. On Chatham and Pitt Islands, Olson has suggested that its extinction resulted from competition with the larger Dieffenbach's rail (also extinct), but this has been refuted later when the two species have been shown to have been sympatric on Mangere.[7][8]

See also

  • Hawkins's rail, another extinct flightless rail endemic to the Chatham Islands.

References

  1. ↑ BirdLife International (2016). "Cabalus modestus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T22728873A94999473. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22728873A94999473.en. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  2. 1 2 "Cabalus modestus. NZTCS". nztcs.org.nz. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  3. ↑ Marchant and Higgins (1993)
  4. ↑ Trewick, S.A. (1997). "Sympatric flightless rails Gallirallus dieffenbachiii and G. modestus on the Chatham Islands, New Zealand; morphometrics and alternative evolutionary scenarios". Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 27 (4): 451–464. Bibcode:1997JRSNZ..27..451T. doi:10.1080/03014223.1997.9517548.
  5. ↑ Trewick SA. 1997. Flightlessness and phylogeny amongst endemic rails (Aves: Rallidae) of the New Zealand region. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 352:429–446.
  6. ↑ Garcia-R, Juan C.; Gibb, Gillian C.; Trewick, Steve A. (December 2014). "Deep global evolutionary radiation in birds: Diversification and trait evolution in the cosmopolitan bird family Rallidae". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 81: 96–108. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.09.008. PMID 25255711.
  7. ↑ Tennyson and Millener (1994)
  8. ↑ Olson (1975c)
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