Chatham rail

The Chatham rail (Cabalus modestus) is an extinct flightless species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, in the Chatham archipelago of New Zealand.[2] Genetic similarity with the Dieffenbach's rail (Gallirallus dieffenbachii) is why many view this species as part of the genus Gallirallus.[3]

Cabalus modestus mount from the collection of Auckland Museum
Illustration from 1907

Chatham rail
Illustration by Keulemans

Extinct  (c.1900)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: †Cabalus
Hutton 1874
Species:
†C. modestus
Binomial name
†Cabalus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)
Synonyms

Gallirallus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)
Rallus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)

The Chatham rail and the Dieffenbach's rail, both flightless, were sympatric on the Chatham Islands. Their sympatry suggests parallel evolution after separate colonisation of the Chatham Islands by a common volant ancestor, presumably the Buff-banded rail (Gallirallus philippensis).[3]

The Chatham rail was first discovered on Mangere in 1871, and 26 specimens collected there are known from museum collections. It became extinct on the island between 1896 and 1900. The species is also known from 19th century bones from Chatham and Pitt Islands. It is likely to have occurred in scrubland and tussock grass.

Extinction

Its extinction was presumably caused by predation by rats and cats (which were introduced in the 1890s), habitat destruction to provide sheep pasture (which destroyed all the island's bush and tussock grass by 1900), and from grazing by goats and rabbits. On Chatham and Pitt Islands, Olson[4] has suggested that its extinction resulted from competition with the larger Dieffenbach's rail (also extinct), but this has been refuted later when the two species have been shown to have been sympatric on Mangere.[5]

References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Cabalus modestus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Marchant and Higgins (1993)
  3. Trewick, S.A. (1997). "Sympatric flightless rails Gallirallus dieffenbachiii and G. modestus on the Chatham Islands, New Zealand; morphometrics and alternative evolutionary scenarios". Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 27 (4): 451–464. doi:10.1080/03014223.1997.9517548.
  4. Olson (1975c)
  5. Tennyson and Millener (1994)


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