Aplonis corvina (Kittlitz, 1833:12)
Kosrae starling
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonym/s: Lamprothornis corvina Kittlitz, 1833:12
Conservation Status
Extinct
Last record: December 1827; 1828 (Tyrberg, 2009:103); 1830's (Kittelberger et al., 2024)
IUCN RedList status: Extinct
Distribution
Kosrae, Caroline Islands, Micronesia
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
The IUCN still states (BirdLife International, 2008) that only two specimens exist, both in St. Petersburg (Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Leningrad?), even though (Mees, 1964) found that 5 specimens exist. There are actually three specimens in the collection of the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Leningrad (discovered to be the case by Prof. A. I. Ivanov; see Mees, 1964), and two newly discovered (in 1964) specimens in the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden by Mees himself, who was the curator of birds at Leiden at the time. The Naturalis [url=http://ip30.eti.uva.nl/naturalis/detail?lang=uk&id=27]website[/url], the official website of the museum at Leiden, states that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerlof_Fokko_Mees]Gerlof Mees[/url] found the specimens in the Leiden collection in 1966, which is clearly an error since the paper anouncing the discovery of the specimens was published in 1964, two years before, in the ornithological journal Ibis. Given that (Mees, 1964) is in Dutch, it seems that this paper has been largely ignored, except by the Naturalis website (which is also Dutch), which is a shame.
For a photograph of the three specimens preserved in the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Leningrad, see [url=http://www.zin.ru/labs/ornithology/photos/collection-aplonis.jpg]here[/url]. I cannot find the accession numbers of these three specimens. However, Mees (1964) quotes A. I. Ivanov, curator of the ornithological collection at the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Leningrad, in correspondence with himself, as follows:
"All three specimens have identical label: No 102. Lamprothomis n. sp. corvina. Ualan. v. KITTLITZ. The name corvina was written some (time) later than other text of the label instead of crossed out words "n. sp."."
In addition, magnifying the photo of the three preserved specimens of this species on the website of the Zoological Institute (the link to which I gave above), reveals two six-digit numbers on labels attached to the left specimen, and the specimen in the middle, respectively: 138168 and 138169, which may represent their accession numbers.
Two further specimens were found by Gerlof Mees (Mees, 1964), as mentioned above:
[url=http://nlbif.eti.uva.nl/naturalis/detail.php?lang=uk&id=27]RMNH 90380[/url] (adult, male)
[url=http://nlbif.eti.uva.nl/naturalis/detail.php?lang=uk&id=27]RMNH 90381[/url] (juvenile, female)
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Kittlitz, Friedrich Heinrich Von. (1833). Kupfertafeln zur Naturgeschichte der Vogel, part 2. Frankfurt a. Main.
Other references:
BirdLife International. (2012). Aplonis corvina. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2.
BirdLife International. (2016). Aplonis corvina. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22710496A94248268. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22710496A94248268.en. Accessed on 30 June 2022.
Brooks, T. 2000. Extinct species. In: BirdLife International (ed.), Threatened Birds of the World, pp. 701-708. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona and Cambridge, U.K.
Day, David. (1981). The Doomsday Book of Animals: A Natural History of Vanished Species. New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press.
Dekker, R. W. R. J. and Quaisser, C. (2006). Type specimens of birds in the National Museum of Natural History, Leiden. Part 3. Passerines: Pachycephalidae – Corvidae (Peters’s sequence). Nationaal Naturhistorisch Museum Technical Bulletin 9: 1-77.
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N.J., Christie, D.A., Elliott, A., Fishpool, L.D.C., Boesman, P. and Kirwan, G.M. 2016. HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: Passerines. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona, Spain and Cambridge, UK.
del Hoyo, J., et al. (2020) Birds of the World. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA
Feare, C. and Craig, A. (1998). Starlings and Mynas. London: A & C Black.
Fuller, Errol. (1988). Extinct Birds. New York: Facts on File Publications. 256 pp.
Greenway, James C. (1957). Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Greenway James C. (1967). Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, Special Publication no 13, 2nd edn. Dover Publications, New York.
Hartert, E. (1891). Katalog der Vogelsammlung im Museum der Senckenbergischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Frankfurt am Main. – Frankfurt am Main: [Senckenbergische naturforschende Gesellschaft], xxii + [1] + 259 pp.
Hayes, Floyd E., Pratt, H. Douglas and Cianchini, Carlos J. (2016). The Avifauna of Kosrae, Micronesia: History, Status, and Taxonomy. Pacific Science January 70(1): 91-127.
Hume, Julian Pender. (2000). Notes on the extinct Kosrae starling Aplonis corvina Kittlitz, 1833. Ibis 122(2): 141-154.
Hume, Julian Pender. (2002). Notes on the extinct Kosrae Starling Aplonis corvina Kittlitz, 1833. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 122: 141-154.
Kittelberger, Kyle D., Tanner, Colby J., Buxton, Amy N., Prewett, Amira and Şekercioğlu, Çağan Hakkı. (2024). Correlates of avian extinction timing around the world since 1500 CE. Avian Research 15: 100213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avrs.2024.100213 [Supplementary data (List of 216 taxa)]
Kittlitz, Friedrich Heinrich Von. (1835). Uber einige noch unbeschreibene vogel von der Insel Luzon. den Carolinen und den Marianen. Memoirs Acad. Imperial Sciences, St. Petersburg 2: 1-9.
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Knox, Alan G. and Walters, Michael P. (1994). Extinct and endangered birds in the collections of The Natural History Museum. British Ornithologists' Club Occasional Publications 1: 1-292. [p. 264]
Mees, Gerlof Fokko. (1964). Twee exemplaren van de uitgestorven glansspreeuw Aplonis corvina in het Rijksmuseum van Naturlijke Historie te Leiden. Ardea 52(3-4): 190-193. [Abstract]
Mlíkovský, Jiří. (2016). Type specimens and type localities of birds (Aves) collected during Friedrich Heinrich von Kittlitz’s circumnavigation in 1826-1829. Part 2. Specimens in other collections. Journal of the National Museum (Prague), Natural History Series 185: 139-156.
Mlíkovský, Jiří and Loskot, V. M. (2016). Type specimens and type localities of birds (Aves) collected during Friedrich Heinrich von Kittlitz’s circumnavigation in 1826-1829. Part 1. Specimens in the collections of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St.-Petersburg, Russia. Journal of the National Museum (Prague), Natural History Series 185: 77-137.
Neufeldt, I. A. (1978). Extinct birds in the collection of the Zoological Institute. Proc. Acad. Sciences U.S.S.R. 76: 106-107.
Pratt, H. D.; Bruner, P. L.; Berrett, D. G. 1987. A field guide to the birds of Hawaii and the tropical Pacific. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Sayol, Ferran, Steinbauer, Manuel J., Blackburn, Tim M., Antonelli, Alexandre and Faurby, Søren. (2020). Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds. Science Advances 6(49): eabb6095. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb6095 [Supplementary Material (Data File S1)]
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Steinbacher, J. (1954). Die typen der vogelsammlung von F. H. von Kittlitz. Senckenbergiana Biologica 4-6: 301-305.
Tyrberg, Tommy. (2009). Holocene avian extinctions, pp. 63-106. In: Turvey, Samuel T. (ed.). Holocene Extinctions. Oxford, UK & New York, USA: Oxford University Press. xii + 352 pp.