New bird species discovered in remote Chilean island

Researchers have described a bird species new to science found on a remote island off the southern tip of the Americas. The subantarctic rayadito (Aphrastura subantarctica), a small brown bird with a large beak, is related to a group of forest-dwelling birds, the rayaditos. But there is no forest on the Diego Ramirez Islands off the coast of southern Chile where The subantarctic rayadito are found. “There are no bushes and no woodland species, literally in the middle of the ocean a forest bird has managed to survive,” Ricardo Rozzi told Reuters. Rozzi is an academic from Chile’s University of Magallanes and the University of North Texas and director of the Cape Horn International Center for Global Change Studies and Biocultural Conservation (CHIC) and an author of the study published recently in Scientific Reports. Genetic analysis revealed that the bird was different from its closely related cousins.

Read more at Reuters.