Nazca Booby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
| Sula granti Rothschild, 1902 |
The Nazca Booby Sula granti is a booby which is found in the eastern Pacific Ocean, namely on the Galápagos Islands where it can be seen by eco-tourists, and on Clipperton Island.
It was formerly regarded as a subspecies of the Masked Booby but the Nazca Booby is now recognized as a separate species. They differ in regard to ecological and morphological (Pitman & Jehl 1998) as well as mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data (Friesen et al. 2002). The Nazca Booby co-occurs with the Masked Booby on Clipperton Island, where they may rarely hybridize (Friesen et al. 2002).
Nazca boobies are known for practicing habitual siblicide. They lay two eggs, several days apart. If both eggs hatch, the elder chick will push its sibling out of the nest area, leaving it to die of thirst or cold. The parent booby will not intervene and the younger chick will inevitably die. It is believed that two eggs are laid so that one remains an insurance in case the other gets destroyed or eaten e.g. by gulls, or the chick dies soon after hatching.
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Sula granti. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Friesen, V. L.; Anderson, D. J.; Steeves, T. E.; Jones, H. & Schreiber, E. A. (2002): Molecular Support for Species Status of the Nazca Booby (Sula granti). Auk 119(3): 820–826. [English with Spanish abstract] DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2002)119[0820:MSFSSO]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext
- Pitman, R. L. & Jehl, J. R. (1998): Geographic variation and reassessment of species limits in the "Masked" Boobies of the eastern Pacific Ocean. Wilson Bulletin 110(2): 155-170.
[edit] External links
 |
This bird-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
