Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

A previously unknown subspecies of bird was discovered on an isolated South American mountain range. This coloful bird is approximately the size of a stick of butter. It has a fiery rust-red cap, lemon-yellow throat and a sooty-yellow belly streaked with bright yellow that contrast with a black beak, eye patch, wings, legs and tail (pictured). The bird's coloration distinguishes it from its closest relative, the Yellow-breasted Brush-Finch, because its back is black and it lacks a white bar on its wings.

Two birds were captured in January 2004, both of which were photographed and their DNA sampled. The research team released one bird unharmed, but the other bird died shortly after capture so its body was prepared for scientific study. Its body is now located in the museum collection at the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

This is the first time that a live specimen has been used as the basis for a formal scientific description of a new bird subspecies.

"There are about two to three new birds found in the world every year," said Thomas Donegan. "It's a very rare event." Donegan is from the Colombian bird conservation organization, Fundacion ProAves.

"The description of a new bird is a rare event in modern times," agreed co-discoverer Blanca Huertas. Huertas is a lepidopterist and curator at the Natural History Museum in London.

The bird was named the Yariguíes brush-finch, Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum, in honor of the indigenous people that formerly lived in the mountainous area where it was found. According to legend, the Yariguíes tribe committed mass suicide to avoid enslavement by the Spanish conquistadors.

This subspecies is a new member of the Atlapetes latinuchus species complex. A species complex is a group of closely related species, or "taxa" as they are known by scientists, that are difficult to distinguish. The description was published in the June 2006 issue of the scientific journal, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists Club.

To access the bird's isolated habitat, Donegan and Huertas were dropped by helicopter onto an isolated peak in the Serranía de los Yariguíes mountains in northern Colombia at 10,000 feet above sea level. This is the first time that scientists have visited the highest elevations in this mountain range. This bird is also found in other nearby mountains in Colombia's Eastern Andean range.

"This is just the first of several new species that we will be describing from the Yariguíes mountains," promised Huertas. "In my own specialist group, butterflies, we have found several new taxa that will be described soon," Huertas added.

"Before we began this study, no one knew what species lived in the Yariguíes mountains and whether they needed protecting," said Donegan.

This discovery is important because this subspecies lives in a 500 acre tract of pristine cloud forest that the Colombian government recently set aside for a new national park, the Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve.

Sources:

Blanca Huertas (Images)

Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club (formal scientific description: PDF)

Natural History Museum (Story, quotes)

ProAves (Story, quotes)

Reuters (Story)

.