Discovering a new species isn’t always as easy as saying “Look, there’s a new species!” In the case of a rare bird recently identified in Brazil, it took about 20 years for scientists to gather enough evidence to classify it as a new species.
The journey began in the early 1990s when scientists found an isolated population of songbirds in the heavily logged mountains of Bahia, Brazil. At the time researchers labeled the small (12 centimeters in length) birds in this location as a previously known, widespread species called the mouse-colored tapaculo (Scytalopus speluncae). A second, equally isolated population was discovered nearby in 1999. Three more sites in the mountains of Bahia followed, all heavily degraded by logging and deforestation.
But even as these new populations were discovered, scientists and birders were debating just what constituted a mouse-colored tapaculo. Plumages for the birds varied widely throughout the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Some scientists wondered if the man who first described the species back in 1835, French zoologist Édouard Ménétriés, had incorrectly described the birds or mixed up the locations where he found his specimens. During the first decade of this century the birds were renamed at least twice. In 2010 the original name of the mouse-colored tapaculo was reinstated and a second species, the rock tapaculo (S. petrophilus) was added.
But that still left the birds in Bahia, which had plumage, songs and other morphological characteristics unlike the other two species. Finding out much about them was hard, though, because the well-camouflaged birds live in the darkness of low, densely tangled branches. Still, researchers from Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul and other institutions were able to observe them, record their songs, measure their bodies and conduct genetic tests. The results indicated they were neither mouse-colored tapaculos nor rock tapaculos.
Read full original article: Deforestation Threatens Newly Identified Bird in Brazil
