SANTIAGO (Reuters) – In a sparse, windy field at the cold end of South America lives a small bird whose peaceful life praises the importance of studying the world’s most remote places.
On the Diego Ramírez Islands, 100 kilometers from Cape Horn in southern Chile, scientists have identified a 16-gram brown bird with black and yellow bands and a large beak, the Antarctic subray, which has baffled biologists.
That’s because the subantarctic chile ray, similar to a type of chile ray that lives in the forests of southern Patagonia and makes its nests in trunk cavities, was found living in a treeless location.
“There’s no bush or forest species, it’s a jungle bird that literally survives in the middle of the ocean,” said Ricardo Rozzi, a researcher at the University of Magallanes in Chile and the University of North Texas and director of Cabo Horn International. Center for Global Change and Biocultural Conservation Studies (CHIC).
Rozzi said the discovery, published Friday in the journal Nature, follows a six-year study in which the tiny bird has become an “obsession” for researchers.
One of the researchers, Rodrigo Vasquez, a biologist at the University of Chile, said genetic studies confirmed the newly discovered species “differs from the rest of the classic Chilean rayfish in one mutation,” and confirms other differences in shape and behavior.
Researchers said they caught and measured 13 people on the island. Birds in the Diego Ramírez population were significantly heavier and larger (with a longer, wider beak and longer tarsi), but with a significantly shorter tail?
(reported by Natalia Ramos)
source: Noticias
