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The hoopoe starling, also known as the Réunion starling or Bourbon crested starling (''Fregilupus varius''), is a species of starling which lived on the Mascarene island of Réunion, and became extinct in the 1850s. Its closest relatives were the Rodrigues starling and the Mauritius starling from nearby islands, and the three apparently originated in Southeast Asia. The bird was first mentioned during the 17th century and was long thought to be related to the hoopoe, from which its name is derived. Although a number of affinities have been proposed, it was confirmed as a starling in a DNA study. The hoopoe starling was in length. Its plumage was primarily white and grey, with its back, wings and tail a darker brown and grey. It had a light, mobile crest, which curled forwards. The bird is thought to have been sexually dimorphic, with males larger and having more curved beaks. The juveniles were more brown than the adults. Little is known about hoopoe starling behaviour. Reportedly living in large flocks, it inhabited humid areas and marshes. The hoopoe starling was omnivorous, feeding on plant matter and insects. Its pelvis was robust, its feet and claws large, and its jaws strong, indicating that it foraged near the ground. The birds were hunted by settlers on Réunion, who also kept them as cagebirds. Nineteen specimens exist in museums around the world. The hoopoe starling was reported to be in decline by the early 19th century, and was probably extinct before the 1860s. A number of factors have been proposed, including competition and predation by introduced species, disease, deforestation and persecution by humans, who hunted it for food and as an alleged crop pest. ==Taxonomy== The first account thought to mention the hoopoe starling is a 1658 list of birds of Madagascar written by French governor Étienne de Flacourt. Although he mentioned a black-and-grey "tivouch" or hoopoe, later authors have wondered whether this referred to the hoopoe starling or the Madagascan subspecies of hoopoe (''Upupa epops marginata''), though that bird resembles the Eurasian subspecies. The hoopoe starling was first noted on the Mascarene island of Réunion (then called "Bourbon") by Père Vachet in 1669, but was not described in detail until Sieur Dubois's 1674 account:〔Hume, J. P. (2014). pp. 8–14.〕 Early settlers on Réunion referred to the bird as "huppe", due to the similarity of its crest and curved bill with that of the hoopoe. Little was recorded about the hoopoe starling during the next 100 years, but specimens began to be brought to Europe during the 18th century. Although the species was first scientifically described by French naturalist Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard in the 1779 edition of Comte de Buffon's ''Histoire Naturelle'', it did not receive its scientific name until its designation by Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert for the book's 1783 edition. Boddaert named the bird ''Upupa varia''; its genus name is that of the hoopoe, and its specific name means "variegated", describing its black-and-white colour. Boddaert provided Linnean binomial names for plates in Buffon's works, so the accompanying 1770s plate of the hoopoe starling by François-Nicolas Martinet is considered the holotype or type illustration. Though the plate may have been based on a specimen in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, this is impossible to determine today; the Paris museum originally had five hoopoe starling skins, some which only arrived during the 19th century. The possibly-female specimen MNHN 2000-756, one of the most-illustrated skins, has an artificially-trimmed crest resulting in an unnaturally semi-circular shape, unlike its appearance in life; the type illustration has a similarly-shaped crest.〔 De Flacourt's "tivouch" led early writers to believe that variants of the bird were found on Madagascar and the Cape of Africa; they were thought to be hoopoes of the ''Upupa'' genus, which received names such as ''Upupa capensis'' and ''Upupa madagascariensis''. A number of authors also allied the bird with groups such as birds-of-paradise, bee-eaters, cowbirds, Icteridae, and choughs, resulting in its reassignment to other genera with new names, such as ''Coracia cristata'' and ''Pastor upupa''. In 1831, René-Primevère Lesson placed the bird in its own monotypic genus, ''Fregilipus'', a composite of ''Upupa'' and ''Fregilus'', the latter a defunct genus name of the chough. Auguste Vinson established in 1868 that the bird was restricted to the island of Réunion and proposed a new binomial, ''Fregilupus borbonicus'', referring to the former name of the island.〔Hume, J. P. (2014). pp. 29–44.〕 Hermann Schlegel first proposed in 1857 that the species belonged to the starling family (Sturnidae), reclassifying it as part of the ''Sturnus'' genus ''S. capensis''. This reclassification was observed by other authors; Carl Jakob Sundevall proposed the new genus name ''Lophopsarus'' ("crested starling") in 1872, yet ''Fregilupus varius''—the oldest name—remains the bird's binomial, and all other scientific names are synonyms.〔 In 1874, after a detailed analysis of the only known skeleton (held at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology), James Murie agreed that it was a starling. Richard Bowdler Sharpe said in 1890 that the hoopoe starling was similar to the starling genus ''Basilornis'', but did not note any similarities other than their crests. In 1941, Malcolm R. Miller found the bird's musculature similar to that of the common starling (''Sturnus vulgaris'') after he dissected a specimen preserved in spirits at the Cambridge Museum, but noted that the tissue was very degraded and the similarity did not necessarily confirm a relationship with starlings. In 1957, Andrew John Berger cast doubt on the bird's affinity with starlings due to subtle anatomical differences, after dissecting a spirit specimen at the American Museum of Natural History. Some authors proposed a relationship with vangas (Vangidae), but Hiroyuki Morioka rejected this in 1996, after a comparative study of skulls. In 1875, British ornithologist Alfred Newton attempted to identify a black-and-white bird mentioned in an 18th-century manuscript describing a marooned sailor's stay on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues in 1726–27, hypothesising that it was related to the hoopoe starling. Subfossil bones later found on Rodrigues were correlated with the bird in the manuscript; in 1879, these bones became the basis for a new species, ''Necropsar rodericanus'' (the Rodrigues starling), named by ornithologists Albert Günther and Edward Newton. Although they found the Rodrigues bird closely related to the hoopoe starling, Günther and Newton kept it in a separate genus due to "present ornithological practice". American ornithologist James Greenway suggested in 1967 that the Rodrigues starling belonged in the same genus as the hoopoe starling, due to their close similarity. Subfossils found in 1974 confirmed that the Rodrigues bird was a distinct genus of starling; primarily, its stouter bill warrants generic separation from ''Fregilupus''. In 2014, British palaeontologist Julian P. Hume described a new extinct species, the Mauritius starling (''Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus''), based on subfossils from Mauritius, which was closer to the Rodrigues starling than to the hoopoe starling in its skull, sternal, and humeral features.〔 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「hoopoe starling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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