Podiceps andinus

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Kingdom Animalia

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Phylum Chordata
Class Aves
Order Podicipediformes
Family Podicipedidae
Genus Podiceps
Species Podiceps andinus
Authority (Meyer de Schauensee, 1959)
 
English Name Colombian Grebe
Dutch Name Colombiaanse Fuut
French Name Grèbe des Andes
German Name Andentaucher
Polish Name Perkoz Kolumbijski
Spanish Name Somormujo Colombiano, Zambullidor Cira
 
Synonyms Podiceps nigricollis andinus (Meyer de Schauensee, 1959)
 
Taxonomy The species has occasionally been considered a subspecies of Black-necked Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis. (Fjeldså 1993)
 
Characteristics The Colombian Grebe had a chestnut foreneck and upper breast and a dark-golden auricular fan.
 
Range & Habitat This grebe was restricted to the Bogotá wetlands at about 2,600 m in the Eastern Andes of Colombia (Fjeldså 1993).

Image: a map of a part of South America with the previous range (in red) of the Colombian Grebe. This image is created for The Extinction Website by Peter Maas and it is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
 
History & Population The Colombian Grebe is known from 18 or 19 specimens collected between 1939-1964 (Fjeldså 1993). The species was still abundant on Lake Tota in 1945 (Borrero 1947), but numbers crashed in the 1950s (Fjeldså 1993). The last confirmed record was in 1977 (Fjeldså 1993), and because intensive studies in 1981 (Fjeldså 1993) and 1982 (Varty et al. 1986) failed to find the species, it is now considered extinct (Collar et al. 1994). (BirdLife International 2004; BirdLife International 2007)
 
Extinction Causes The Colombian Grebe's populations crashed due to a combined result of wetland drainage, siltation, pesticide pollution, disruption by reed harvesting, hunting and predation by introduced rainbow trout Salmo gairdneri (Fjeldså 1993).
 
Museum Specimens Do you know where specimens can be found, please contact this website.
 
Relatives The closest living relative of the Colombian Grebe is the Black-necked Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis). This species occurs on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. Another closely related species is the Silvery Grebe (Podiceps occipitalis) from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands, Paraguay, Peru, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Image: Black-necked Grebe or Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis californicus) at nest in Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge, California, United States. This image or recording is the work of an U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. For more information, see the Fish and Wildlife Service copyright policy.
 
Links

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Podiceps andinus 

Colombian Grebe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

References

(Complete website)

 BirdLife International (2004). Podiceps andinus. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 23 March 2008.

BirdLife International (2007) Species factsheet: Podiceps andinus. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 23/3/2008

Borrero, J. I. (1947) Aves ocasionales en la sabana de Bogotá y las lagunas de Fúquene y Tota. Caldasia 4: 491-498.

Collar, N.J., Crosby, M.J. and Stattersfield, A.J. 1994. Birds to Watch 2. The World List of Threatened Birds BirdLife International. Page Bros (Norwich) Ltd, U.K.

Fjeldså, J. (1993) The decline and probable extinction of the Colombian Grebe Podiceps andinus. Bird Conserv. Int. 3: 221-234.

Varty, N., Adams, J., Espin, P. and Hambler, C. (1986) An ornithological survey of Lake Tota, Colombia, 1982. Cambridge, U.K.: International Council for Bird Preservation (Study Report 12).

Last updated: 19th April 2008.

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