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The two extinctions of the Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2021

KEVIN R. BURGIO Open the ORCID record for KEVIN R. BURGIO [Opens in a new window] ,
COLIN J. CARLSON Open the ORCID record for COLIN J. CARLSON [Opens in a new window] ,
ALEXANDER L. BOND Open the ORCID record for ALEXANDER L. BOND [Opens in a new window] ,
MARGARET A. RUBEGA  and
MORGAN W. TINGLEY
KEVIN R. BURGIO*
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, 75 N. Eagleville Rd, Storrs, CT, 06269 USA.
COLIN J. CARLSON
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
ALEXANDER L. BOND
Affiliation:
Bird Group, Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, Akeman Street, Tring, Hertfordshire, HP23 6AP, UK.
MARGARET A. RUBEGA
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, 75 N. Eagleville Rd, Storrs, CT, 06269 USA.
MORGAN W. TINGLEY
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
*
*Author for correspondence; email: kevin.burgio@gmail.com
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Summary

Due to climate change and habitat conversion, estimates of the resulting levels of species extinction over the next century are alarming. Devising conservation solutions will require many different approaches, including examining the extinction processes of recently extinct species. Given that parrots are one of the most threatened groups of birds, information regarding parrot extinction is pressing. While most recent parrot extinctions have been island endemics, the Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis had an 18th-century range covering nearly half of the present-day United States, yet mostly disappeared by the end of the 19th century. Despite a great deal of speculation, the major cause of its extinction remains unknown. Establishing the date when a species went extinct is one of the first steps in determining what caused their extinction. While there have been estimates of their extinction date, these analyses used a limited dataset and did not include observational data. We used a recently published, extensive dataset of Carolina Parakeet specimens and observations combined with a Bayesian extinction estimating model to determine the most likely extinction dates. By considering each of the two subspecies independently, we found that they went extinct ˜30 years apart: the western subspecies C. c. ludovicianus going extinct around 1914 and the eastern subspecies C. c. carolinensis either in the late 1930s or mid-1940s. Had we only considered all observations together, this pattern would have been obscured, possibly missing a major clue in solving the mystery of the parakeet’s extinction. Since the Carolina Parakeet was a wide-ranging species that went extinct during a period of rapid agricultural and industrial expansion, conditions that mirror those occurring in many parts of the world where parrot diversity is highest, any progress we make in unraveling the mystery of their disappearance may be vital to modern conservation efforts.

Keywords

ExtinctionCarolina ParakeetConuropsis carolinensisextinction date estimation
Type
Short Communication
Information
Bird Conservation International , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 498 - 505
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of BirdLife International

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