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The Rodrigues starling (''Necropsar rodericanus'') is an extinct species of starling that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues. Its closest relatives were the Mauritius starling and the hoopoe starling from nearby islands; all three appear to be of Southeast Asian origin. The bird was only reported by French sailor Julien Tafforet, who was marooned on the island from 1725 to 1726. Tafforet observed it on the offshore islet of Île Gombrani. Subfossil remains found on the mainland were described in 1879, and were suggested to belong to the bird mentioned by Tafforet. There was much confusion about the bird and its taxonomic relations throughout the 20th century. The Rodrigues starling was long, and had a stout beak. It was described as having a white body, partially black wings and tail, and a yellow bill and legs. Little is known about its behaviour. Its diet included eggs and dead tortoises, which it processed with its strong bill. Predation by rats introduced to the area was probably responsible for the bird's extinction some time in the 18th century. It first became extinct on mainland Rodrigues, then on Île Gombrani, its last refuge. ==Taxonomy== In 1725, the French sailor Julien Tafforet was marooned on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues for nine months, and his report of his time there was later published as ''Relation d'île Rodrigue''. In the report, he described encounters with various indigenous species, including a white and black bird which fed on eggs and dead tortoises. He stated that it was confined to the offshore islet of Île Gombrani, which was then called au Mât. François Leguat, a Frenchman who was also marooned on Rodrigues from 1691 to 1693 and had written about several species there (his account was published in 1708), did not have a boat, and therefore could not explore the various islets as Tafforet did. No people who later traveled to the island mentioned the bird. In an article written in 1875, the British ornithologist Alfred Newton attempted to identify the bird from Tafforet's description, and hypothesised that it was related to the extinct hoopoe starling (''Fregilupus varius''), which formerly inhabited nearby Réunion. Subfossil bones of a starling-like bird were first discovered on Rodrigues by the police magistrate George Jenner In 1866 and 1871, and by the reverend Henry Horrocks Slater in 1874. They were found in caves on the Plaine Coral, a limestone plain in south-west Rodrigues.〔Hume, J. P. (2014). pp. 44–51.〕 These bones included the cranium, mandible, sternum, coracoid, humerus, metacarpus, ulna, femur, tibia, and metatarsus of several birds; the bones were deposited in the British Museum and the Cambridge Museum. In 1879, the bones became the basis of a scientific description of the bird by ornithologists Albert Günther and Edward Newton (the brother of Alfred).〔 They named the bird ''Necropsar rodericanus''; ''Nekros'' and ''psar'' are Greek for "dead" and "starling", while ''rodericanus'' refers to the island of Rodrigues. This binomial was originally proposed by Slater in an 1874 manuscript he sent to Günther and Newton. Slater had prepared the manuscript for an 1879 publication, which was never released, but Günther and Newton quoted Slater's unpublished notes in their own 1879 article, and credited him for the name.〔 BirdLife International credits Slater rather than Günther and Newton for the name.〔 Günther and Newton determined that the Rodrigues starling was closely related to the hoopoe starling, and they only kept it in a separate genus due to what they termed "present ornithological practice". Due to the strongly built bill, they considered the new species likely the same as the bird mentioned in Tafforet's account. In 1900, the English scientist George Ernest Shelley used the spelling ''Necrospa'' in a book, thereby creating a junior synonym; however, he attributed the name to zoologist Philip Sclater. In 1967, the American ornithologist James Greenway suggested that the Rodrigues starling should belong in the same genus as the hoopoe starling, ''Fregilupus'', due to the similarity of the species. More subfossils found in 1974 added support to the claim that the Rodrigues bird was a distinct genus of starling. The stouter bill is mainly what warrants generic separation from ''Fregilupus''.〔 In 2014, the British palaeontologist Julian P. Hume described a new extinct species, the Mauritius starling (''Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus''), based on subfossils from Mauritius. It was shown to be closer to the Rodrigues starling than to the hoopoe starling, due to the features of its skull, sternum and humerus.〔 Until then, the Rodrigues starling was the only Mascarene passerine bird named from fossil material. In 1898, the British naturalist Henry Ogg Forbes described a second species of ''Necropsar'', ''N. leguati'', based on a skin in the World Museum Liverpool, specimen D.1792, which was labelled as coming from Madagascar. He suggested that this was actually the bird mentioned by Tafforet, instead of ''N. rodericanus'' from mainland Rodrigues. Walter Rothschild, however, believed the Liverpool specimen to be an albinistic specimen of a ''Necropsar'' species supposedly from Mauritius. In 1953, Japanese writer Masauji Hachisuka suggested that ''N. leguati'' was distinct enough to warrant its own genus, ''Orphanopsar''. In a 2005 DNA analysis, the specimen was eventually identified as an albinistic specimen of the grey trembler (''Cinclocerthia gutturalis'') from Martinique. Hachisuka believed the carnivorous habits described by Tafforet to be unlikely for a starling, and thought the lack of a crest suggested that it was not closely related to ''Fregilupus''. He was reminded of corvids because of the black-and-white plumage, and assumed the bird seen by Tafforet was a sort of chough. In 1937, he named it ''Testudophaga bicolor'', and coined the common name "bi-coloured chough". Hachisuka's assumptions are disregarded today, and modern ornithologists find Tafforet's bird to be identical to the one described from subfossil remains.〔〔 In 1987, the British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles prepared a manuscript that described a new species of Old World babbler, ''Rodriguites microcarina'', based on an incomplete sternum found in a cave on Rodrigues. In 1989, the name was mistakenly published before the description, making it a nomen nudum. Later examination of the sternum by Hume showed that ''Rodriguites microcarina'' was identical to the Rodrigues starling.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rodrigues starling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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