Nightingale reed warbler
species of bird
The nightingale reed warbler (Acrocephalus luscinius), or Guam reed-warbler, is an extinct songbird that was endemic to Guam.
Taxonomy and systematics
The nightingale reed warbler was described by the French zoologists
Jean Quoy and Joseph Gaimard in 1832 from a specimen collected on the island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean. They coined the binomial name, Thryothorus luscinius. Until 2011, the Pagan reed warbler, Aguiguan reed warbler, and Saipan reed warbler were considered as subspecies of the nightingale reed warbler until split by the IOC.
Extinction
The nightingale reed warbler was driven to extinction by several introduced species. These included the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) which has also decimated the populations or even caused the extinctions of several other bird species on Guam. Other introduced predators included rats (Rattus sp.), cats (Felis catus) and feral ungulates such as goats (Capra hircus) or sheep (Ovis aries). An introduced plant, ivy gourd (Coccinia grandis), destroyed the canopy of the trees that nightingale reed warblers built their nests in. Wetland destruction, fires and pesticides, as well as intensive land use for agriculture or building further reduced the available habitat. It has not been seen since 1969.
Nesting
The nightingale reed warbler was nonmigratory and nested year round.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nightingale reed warbler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.