Inaccessible Island rail
The Inaccessible Island rail is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. It is endemic to In inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic. Its affinities and origin were a long-standing mystery; in 2018 its closest relative was identified as the South American dot-winged crake.
About Inaccessible Island rail in brief
The Inaccessible Island rail is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. It is endemic to In inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic. The species was described by physician Percy Lowe in 1923 but had first come to the attention of scientists 50 years earlier. Its affinities and origin were a long-standing mystery; in 2018 its closest relative was identified as the South American dot-winged crake. It has brown plumage, black bill and feet, and adults have a red eye. Pairs are territorial and monogamous, with both parents being responsible for incubating the eggs and raising the chicks. Its adaptations to living on a tiny island at high densities include low base metabolic rates, small clutch sizes, and flightlessness. Unlike many other oceanic islands, In accessible Island has remained free from introduced predators, allowing this species to flourish while many other flightless birds, particularly flightless rails, have gone extinct. The species is nevertheless considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to its single small population, which would be threatened by the accidental introduction of mammalian predators such as rats or cats. The generic name Atlantisia was named for the mythical island of Atlantis, destroyed by a volcano. The specific name rogersi honours the Rev. M. C. Rogers, who collected and sent the first specimens of the species to Lowe. The most recent comparative morphological study placed it in the genus pro-Rallus in 1998, a subtribe of the genus Crecina in the Ocean genus Dryolimas.
It would have a relict distribution and would have been present in South America and Africa, where the ancestors of the Inaccessible rail came from. It was also presumed that like most other land birds of thetristan archipelago ), it had probably reached the island from ancestors in South. America. By 1955 it was understood that the rail was the descendant of ancestors that had flown to In accessible island. It had been assumed that the species was close to the other \”island hens\” known in the Atlantic, possibly a gallinule, but on examination Lowe felt ‘compelled to refer it to a new genus’ The species first came to the Attention of scientists during the Challenger expedition of 1872–1876. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson learned of the. species and recorded observations made by two German brothers, the Stoltenhoffs, who had been living on the island for the last two years. Another attempt was made to collect a specimen by Lord Crawford on his yacht Valhalla in 1905. The following year two study skins arrived in the Natural History Museum, London, followed soon after by another skin and a specimen in spirits. In 1973 it was suggested that it related to the genera Rallus and Hypotaenidia based on the structure of the skeleton of In particular he suggested it was part of a group that included the Indian Ocean genus dryolimnas.
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This page is based on the article Inaccessible Island rail published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
