The olomao (''Myadestes lanaiensis'') is a small, dark
solitaire
Solitaire may refer to:
Film and television
*'' Le Solitaire'', a 1987 French film
* ''Solitaire'' (1991 film), a Canadian drama film
* ''Solitaire'' (2008 film), a drama film
*''Solitaire'', 2016 Lebanese comedy film with Bassam Kousa
*"Solit ...
endemic to
Maui
Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...
,
Lānai and
Molokai
Molokai or Molokai ( or ; Molokaʻi dialect: Morotaʻi ) is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its g ...
in the
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands () are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the Pacific Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the Hawaii (island), island of Hawaii in the south to nort ...
. It is currently listed as
Critically Endangered
An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...
under the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological spe ...
.
Description
It grows up to 7 inches in length. The male and female of the species look similar. It is dark brown above and gray below with blackish legs.
Call
Its song consists of a complex melody of flute-like notes, liquid warbles, and gurgling whistles. The call is a catlike rasp, with an alternate high pitched note similar to a police whistle.
Behavior and diet
It occurs in densely vegetated gulches, frequenting the understory where it often perches motionless in a hunched posture. Like other native Hawaiian thrushes, it quivers its wings and feeds primarily on
fruit
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering.
Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propaga ...
and
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...
s.
Conservation
The olomao is still classified as Critically Endangered due to the possibility that an extremely small population or individuals may still exist. The last definitive sighting occurred on Oahu in the 1850s, on Lanai in 1933, and on Molokai in 1980 in the Kamakou Preserve.
In the late 19th century, it was considered common to abundant on the Maui, Lanai, and Molokai, but land clearing, including the establishment and subsequent development of
Lānai City, and
avian malaria
Avian malaria is a parasitic disease of birds, caused by parasite species belonging to the genera ''Plasmodium'' and '' Hemoproteus'' (phylum Apicomplexa, class Haemosporidia, family Plasmoiidae). The disease is transmitted by a dipteran vector in ...
brought on by
introduced mosquito
Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a Family (biology), family of small Diptera, flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word ''mosquito'' (formed by ''Musca (fly), mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish and Portuguese for ''little fly''. Mos ...
es decimated the birds. Introduced animals such as
feral pigs
A feral pig is a domestic pig which has gone feral, meaning it lives in the wild. The term feral pig has also been applied to wild boars, which can interbreed with domestic pigs. They are found mostly in the Americas and Australia. Razorback a ...
(which create pools from their wallows for breeding mosquitoes) also aided in its demise.
Taxonomy
It is closely related to the other species of Hawaiian thrushes, the
puaiohi (''M. palmeri''),
ōmao (''M. obscurus''), and the probably extinct
kāmao (''M. myadestinus'').
Maui birds may have constituted a separate subspecies or race, but became extinct before any studies could be performed.
Two
subspecies
In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...
are recognized:
*''M. l. lanaiensis'' - Lānai thrush
*''M. l. rutha'' - Molokai thrush
The extinct
ʻāmaui, that was endemic to
Oʻahu
Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...
, has sometimes been considered as a subspecies.
[
]
References
External links
Species factsheet
- BirdLife International
3D view
of specimen RMNH 110.026 at Naturalis
Naturalis Biodiversity Center () is a national museum of natural history and a research center on biodiversity in Leiden, Netherlands. It was named the European Museum of the Year 2021.
Although its current name and organization are relatively ...
, Leiden (requires QuickTime
QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...
browser plugin)
Myadestes
Endemic birds of Hawaii
Biota of Lanai
Biota of Maui
Biota of Molokai
Critically endangered fauna of Hawaii
Birds described in 1891
Taxa named by Scott Barchard Wilson
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
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