Large-billed Reed-warbler
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| Acrocephalus orinus Oberholser, 1905 |
Large-billed Reed-warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) is an Old World warbler in the genus Acrocephalus. The species was known from a single specimen collected in India in 1867 and rediscovered in the wild in Thailand in 2006. The identity of the bird caught in Thailand was established by matching DNA sequences extracted from feathers; the bird was released. After the rediscovery in the wild a second specimen was discovered amid Acrocephalus dumetorum specimens in the collections of the Natural History Museum at Tring.[2]
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[edit] History
It was first collected by Allan Octavian Hume in the Sutlej Valley near Rampoor, Himachal Pradesh, India on 13 November 1867. This specimen (BMNH registration no. 1886.7.8. 1742) was first provisionally described as Phyllopneuste macrorhyncha (Hume, 1869[3]) but the name was changed two years later to Acrocephalus macrorhynchus (Hume, 1871). H C Oberholser however pointed out in 1905 that this was unacceptable because a specimen from Egypt described by von Müller in 1853 as Calamoherpe macrorhyncha turned out to be Acrocephalus stentoreus; Acrocephalus macrorhynchus was abandoned in favour of A. orinus. The identity of the species was in question and until 2002 was considered as a synonym of the Clamorous Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus stentoreus).[4] Some others considered it an aberrant Blyth's Reed Warbler. A recent re-check of the morphology[5] and the mtDNA suggested that it was a distinct species.[6]
[edit] Rediscovery
On March 27, 2006 a living specimen was caught at the Laem Phak Bia Environmental Research and Development Project in Phetchaburi, Thailand by ornithologist Philip Round of Mahidol University. The bird was ringed and two feathers were extracted; DNA from them was found to match the DNA of the 1867 specimen.[7][8]
Based on the short and rounded wings, earlier studies had suggested that the species was likely to be a short-distant migrant or a resident. The rediscoveries of a second museum specimen from a different location and the wild specimen from Thailand suggests that this may not be so.
[edit] References
- ^ BirdLife International (2004). Acrocephalus orinus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 6 March 2007.
- ^ Birdlife International Accessed March 2007
- ^ Hume, A. 1869. Ibis 2 (5): 355–357 (no title).
- ^ Grimmett, R., Inskipp, C. & Inskipp, T. 1998. Birds of the Indian Subcontinent. London: A. & C. Black.
- ^ Vaurie, C. (1955) Systematic Notes on Palearctic Birds. No. 18:Supplementary Notes on Corvidae, Timaliinae, Alaudidae, Sylviinae, Hirundinidae, and Turdinae. American Museum Novitates. 1753 [1]
- ^ Bensch, S and D. Pearson (2002) The Large-billed Reed Warbler Acrocephalus orinus revisited. Ibis (2002), 144:259–267 PDF Nucleotide sequence
- ^ The Nation, March 6, 2007
- ^ Round, Philip D., Bengt Hansson, David J. Pearson, Peter R. Kennerley, Staffan Bensch. (2007) Lost and found: the enigmatic large-billed reed warbler Acrocephalus orinus rediscovered after 139 years. Journal of Avian Biology 38:2 133
