Scientists Describe Trove of New Bird Species on Indonesian Islands

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-describe-trove-of-new-bird-species-on-indone-1840902992

Scientists encountered five previously undescribed bird species during a six-week trip to three Indonesian islands, according to a new study.

People like birds for more than just their appearances: Birds are a diverse group of relatively easy-to-study animals, with a dedicated group of citizen scientists providing data on them that can inform biologists’ understanding of biodiversity more generally. But researchers have long thought that they’d catalogued most of the bird species, and there have been just a trickle of new species descriptions annually. A find such as this one demonstrates that much of the world’s biodiversity is likely still hidden from biologists, even as humanity destroys the habitats that these hidden species rely on.

“Habitat destruction on these islands is rampant and climate change has already taken its toll,” the study’s first author Frank Rheindt, associate professor in the department of biological sciences at the National University of Singapore, told Gizmodo in an email.

Researchers in Singapore, with the help of local collaborators in Indonesia including researcher Dewi Prawiradilaga, ventured to three of the islands off of the northeastern coast of Sulawesi, the big k-shaped Indonesian island, from November 2013 to January 2014. As with any specimen-collecting trip, they hiked around the islands, taking birds that had flown into a net to analyze later. Yes, this involves killing the bird, the ethics of which are debated.

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