The Macquarie parakeet (''Cyanoramphus erythrotis''), also known as the Macquarie Island parakeet, is an extinct parrot from

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...

Macquarie Island Macquarie Island is an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 197 ...

, an outlying part of

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, in the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

Taxonomy

The Macquarie parakeet was previously considered to be a subspecies of the

red-fronted parakeet The red-crowned parakeet (''Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae''), also known as red-fronted parakeet and by its Māori name of kākāriki,Parr, M., Juniper, T., D'Silva, C., Powell, D., Johnston, D., Franklin, K., & Restall, R. (2010). Parrots: A Guid ...

''C. novaezelandiae'', which it resembled in appearance, but was later lumped with Reischek's parakeet from the

Antipodes Islands The Antipodes Islands ( Maōri: Moutere Mahue; "Abandoned island") are inhospitable and uninhabited volcanic islands in subantarctic waters to the south of – and territorially part of – New Zealand. The 21 km2 archipelago lies 860 ...

in a 2001 paper by Wee Ming Boon and others following an examination of the molecular systematics of the genus which found that many of the red-crowned parakeet subspecies should be elevated to full species.Boon, Wee Ming; Kearvell, Jonathan C.; Daugherty, Charles H.; & Chambers, Geoffrey K. (2001). Molecular systematics and conservation of kakariki (''Cyanoramphus spp.''). ''Science for Conservation'' 176. Dept of Conservation:Wellington, New Zealand. However, subsequently the provenance of Boon ''et al.''’s supposed Macquarie Island material was shown to be mistaken, originating from the Antipodes Islands instead.Scofield, R. Paul. (2005). The supposed Macquarie Parakeet in the collection of Canterbury Museum. ''Notornis'' 52(2): 117-120

History

When Macquarie Island was discovered in 1810 the parrots were widespread in tussock

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur natur ...

and abundant on the shoreline, feeding on

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s in beach-washed

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

. Despite the introduction of

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

s and

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

s to the island by 1820, as well as being hunted for food by

sealers Sealer may refer either to a person or ship engaged in seal hunting, or to a sealant; associated terms include: Seal hunting * Sealer Hill, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica * Sealers' Oven, bread oven of mud and stone built by sealers around 18 ...

, the parrots remained common there until about 1880.Taylor, R.H. (1979). How the Macquarie Parakeet became extinct. ''New Zealand Journal of Ecology'' 2: 42-45. The transition from abundance to extinction took little more than a decade. The critical events leading to the extinction of the parrot were the introductions of both

weka The weka, also known as the Māori hen or woodhen (''Gallirallus australis'') is a flightless bird species of the rail family. It is endemic to New Zealand. It is the only extant member of the genus '' Gallirallus''. Four subspecies are recogni ...

s and

European rabbit The European rabbit (''Oryctolagus cuniculus'') or coney is a species of rabbit native to the Iberian Peninsula (including Spain, Portugal, and southwestern France), western France, and the northern Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa. It has b ...

s to the island in the 1870s and their subsequent spread during the 1880s. Until then winter, with the seasonal absence of burrow-

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materia ...

ing

petrel Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the bird order Procellariiformes. Description The common name does not indicate relationship beyond that point, as "petrels" occur in three of the four families within that group (all except the albatross f ...

s and breeding

penguin Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...

s, was a period of food scarcity for

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s, which served to keep their numbers low. The presence of rabbits provided a year-round food supply for cats and wekas and allowed their numbers to expand, leading to increased predation on the parrot, the last sighting of which was in 1891.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q282809 Cyanoramphus Extinct birds of Australia Bird extinctions since 1500 Birds described in 1832 Taxa named by Johann Georg Wagler Extinct birds of subantarctic islands Macquarie Island Species made extinct by human activities