Image: plate 25 from Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (1907) by Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild. This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the European Union, Canada, the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
Mourer-Chauviré, et al. (1995. Nature 373:568) recently found abundant
remains of an extinct ibis (Borbonibis latipes) that was closely related
to Threskiornis, but with a shorter, less curved bill. An old
account reported that the bill of the Reunion Solitaire was "like
that of a Woodcock, but larger", leading to the suggestion that the
Reunion Solitaire might have been an ibis, although it was thought to have
been flightless, and the fossil ibis bones do not indicate flightless ness. However, the authors propose to designate the fossil
as Threskiornis solitarius, with
Borbonicus latipes as a junior
synonym. Thus, the Réunion Solitaire may now be called the
Réunion Flightless Ibis and transferred to the Threskiornithidae. This
bird was apparently a flightless
ibis closely related to the Sacred Ibis of Africa, though early travellers
who reported the "solitaire" did not mention an ibis at all.
Image: Réunion Flightless Ibis, Threskiornis solitarius. Created by Peter Maas for The Extinction Website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence.
The
Réunion
solitaire was endemic to the island Réunion
(to France),
which is a part of the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean.
(BirdLife International 2004)
Image: map showing the location of the island of Réunion, the former range of the Réunion Sacred Ibis. Created by Peter Maas for The Extinction Website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence. This applies worldwide.
Like the Rodrigues Solitaire the exact date it became extinct is not known. Its extinction can be placed in the early 18th century with the last account being that of Feuilley in 1705 (Cheke 1987; BirdLife International 2004). Bary de Saint Vincent visited the Island in 1801 and reported that no members of the species had been seen for some time.
Image (left): Painting by Pieter Wothoos (1654-1693).
Image (right): water-colour drawing by Pieter Holsteyn the elder (1580-1662).
These images are in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the European Union, Canada, the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
If a true species, its (also extinct) nearest relatives were the Rodrigues Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria) which lived on the island Rodriguez and the famous Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) which lived on the island Mauritius.
Researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, have taken samples from a
preserved specimen in an attempt to uncover the extinct bird's family tree
in 2002. The Oxford team worked with the Natural History Museum to collect
and analyse genetic material from a Rodrigues solitaire, the dodo, and from another 35 kinds of living pigeon and
dove. Their analysis
confirmed that the Rodriguez Solitaire and the dodo were, as expected, each others closest relative.
What is less expected is that these two extinct flightless giants are
nested deep inside the pigeon family tree. In other words, dodos are
more closely related to some flying pigeons than those flying pigeons
are to other flying pigeon. Among living pigeons, the dodos are most
close to the Nicobar Pigeon (Caloenus nicobarica), a beautiful
pigeon from South East Asia.
Almost as closely related are the crowned pigeons of New Guinea.
If the Réunion solitaire has been a true dodo species it would have been
related to these pigeons as well.
Photo: Nicobar Pigeon at Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England. Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in August 2003 and placed in the public domain by the copyright holder.
The
Mauritius Encyclopedia - The Dodo Family Secrets - DNA yields dodo family
secrets.
References
Cheke, A. S. (1987) An ecological history of the Mascarene Islands, with particular reference to extinctions and introductions of land vertebrates. Pp. 5-89 in A. W. Diamond, ed. Studies of Mascarene island birds. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Hachisuka, M. (1953) The Dodo and kindred birds. London: Witherby.
Mourer-Chauviré, C. and Moutou, F. (1987) Découverte d'une forme récemment éteinte d'ibis endémique insulaire de l'île de la Réunion Borbonibis latipes n. gen. n. sp. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris. Serie D (II) 305: 419-423.
Mourer-Chauviré, C., Bour, R. and Ribes, S. (1995) Was the Solitaire of Réunion an ibis? Nature 373: 568.
Storer, R. W. (1970) Independent evolution of the Dodo and the Solitaire. Auk 87: 369-370.
Last
updated: 11th April 2010.
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