The Puerto Rican amazon, or iguaca, is the only parrot endemic to Puerto Rico. There are two recognized subspecies: A. albifrons and A. agilis. The species is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union since 1994.
About Puerto Rican amazon in brief
The Puerto Rican amazon, or iguaca, is the only parrot endemic to Puerto Rico. It is a predominantly green parrot with a red forehead and white rings around the eyes. There are two recognized subspecies: A. albifrons and A. agilis. The species is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union since 1994. It reproduces once a year and is a cavity nester. Once the female lays eggs she will remain in the nest and continuously incubate them until hatching. The chicks are fed by both parents and will fledge 60 to 65 days after hatch. This parrot’s diet is varied and consists of flowers, fruits, leaves, bark and nectar obtained from the forest canopy. Its closest relatives are believed to be the Cuban amazon and the Hispaniolan amazon. There is no evidence that the West Indies were connected to a continent in the past, and thus the various native bird species are assumed to be descended from those that immigrated to the Caribbean at some point. Most Caribbean bird species originate from Central, North and South America. The Amazona species found in the Caribbean are divided in two groups: five mid-sized species found. in the Greater Antilles and seven large species in the Lesser Antilles. All Greater Antillean amazons display characteristics leading to suppositions of relatedness, including predominantly green-toned color patterns and white Ringed Parrots.
The Puerto RicanAmazon was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. In 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Psittacus vittatus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. Buffon mistaken believed that his specimen had been collected in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, rather than in Puerto Rico, and hence \”Puerto Rican parrot\” is an alternative common name in North America. In 1830 the Puerto Rican Amazon is now placed in the large Neotropical genus Amazona that was introduced by French naturalist René Lesson in 1830. The specific epithet vittaters is Latin for \”banded\”. The species completely vanished from Vieques and Mona Island, nearby to the main island of Puerto Rico,. Conservation efforts commenced in 1968 to save the bird from extinction. Subsequent studies showed that size and color patterns were not sufficient to assess evolutionary relationships, even within the same species of amazon that changed with ease within evolutionary time. The research concluded that the Puerto Rica amazon had evolved from the Hispaniola amazon found in Hispaniola, but it has since been argued that the similarities found between the black-billed amazon of Jamaica and the Jamaica amazon have been omitted in his analysis of the same group of species.
You want to know more about Puerto Rican amazon?
This page is based on the article Puerto Rican amazon published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
