New Parrot Species With A Call Like A Hawk Discovered

2017-06-28 09:58:06

PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY SILVA (CC BY), CREATIVE COMMONS

PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY SILVA (CC BY), CREATIVE COMMONS

A  new species of parrot – described as “phlegmatic” with a call like a bird of prey – has been discovered by scientists, it has been revealed.

Ornithologist Dr Miguel Gomez Garza and colleagues found the newly named blue-winged amazons while on a trip to a remote part of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico in 2014. Research then established it was a distinct species, based on its shape, colour pattern, call and behaviour.

“A very distinctive feature  is its call, which is loud, sharp, short, repetitive and monotonous. the researchers wrote. “In flight, the call is a loud, short, sharp and repetitive yak-yak-yak.”

One species-rich parrot genus is Amazona, which is widely distributed in the New World. Here we describe a new Amazona form, which is endemic to the Yucatán Peninsula. This parrot is clearly separable from other Amazona species in eleven morphometric characters as well as call and behavior. The clear differences in these features imply that the parrot most likely represents a new species. In contrast to this, the phylogenetic tree based on mitochondrial markers shows that this parrot groups with strong support within A. albifrons from Central America, which would suggest that it is a subspecies of A. albifrons

 

Source: Silva T, Guzmán A, Urantówka AD, Mackiewicz P. (2017) A new parrot taxon from the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico—its position within genus Amazona based on morphology and molecular phylogeny. PeerJ 5:e3475 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3475, nationalgeographic.com, independent.co.uk