As we near the end of 2016, you probably read various statistics about events that happened during the past year. We at the museum of Biological Diversity are, for example, interested in how many species have become known to science and how many have gone extinct during the last year.
I came across a list of 13 bird species that had to be declared extinct during 2016. A quick search on VertNet – an online database that aggregates occurrence records from many natural history museums around the world and is accessible to everyone for free over the Internet – so check it out! – reveals that at least some of these extinct species will live on as specimens in natural history collections. These birds all lived on islands and have actually only recently become known to science as distinct species. They will not live longer in the wild, but some will be accessible in museum collections. Here researchers can study them to find out how these species lived and their findings may help prevent extinctions of related species in the future. That’s why we need to keep preserving our specimens!
Below are some photos of the Vermilion Flycatchers in our collection, the males have bright red plumage with black, the females are more subtle in their coloration. Metadata are important with each specimens, including where the bird was found. When some island populations of a species get split off into their own species we can then update our database. We do not have what is now known as the least vermilion flycatcher, our specimens are from Brazil, Texas, Colorado and one skin from Ohio. You may have guessed, the latter was prepared by Milton Trautman in 1958, collected by William G. Porter in Clark county. Only few records of this species exist in Ohio. On eBird, an online database of bird observations, I found only four additional sightings in 1956, 2001, 2009 and the latest in 2010.
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- Vermilion Flycatcher Pyrocephalus rubinus, photo by S. Malinich
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- Vermilion Flycatcher, male
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- Marianne white-eye Zosterops semiflavus CC0 Henrik Grönvold
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- Laysan Honeycreeper Himatione fraithii CC0 John Gerrard Keulemans
The following three species exist in natural history museums, mostly in large collections such as the American Museum of Natural History, but also in smaller ones like the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History where one of the Laysan Honeycreepers can be found. Here are the numbers:
19 specimens of Laysan Honeycreeper Himatione fraithii
166 specimens of Least Vermilion Flycatcher Pyrocephalus dubius
2 specimens of Marianne White-eye Zosterops semiflavus
You may remember from our fundraiser last October that the OSU tetrapods collection also holds specimens of several extinct species. Let’s hope that we do not have to add any new bird species to our already extinct species in 2017. Happy New Year!