Justification
This species is known from Mauritius, but has been driven Extinct by hunting pressure. The last records date from 1673-1675, and it was absent in 1693.
Taxonomic source(s)
Brooks, T. 2000. Extinct species. In: BirdLife International (ed.), Threatened birds of the world, pp. 701-708. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona and Cambridge, U.K.
Distribution and populationLophopsittacus mauritianus is known from numerous bones and travellers' reports and sketches from
Mauritius (Cowles 1987). Hoffman, writing in 1680 based on observations in 1673-1675, gave the last definite reports of the species, and it had disappeared by 1693
(Cheke 1987).
EcologyThere is very little known, although it is likely to have been a forest species and its heavy bill indicates it specialised on large nuts.
ThreatsBirds were large and were poor fliers, but not flightless (Holyoak 1971),
and consequently heavily hunted
(Cheke 1987) and this is likely to have caused its extinction.
Related state of the world's birds case studies
References
Cheke, A. S. 1987. An ecological history of the Mascarene Islands, with particular reference to extinctions and introductions of land vertebrates. In: Diamond, A.W. (ed.), Studies of Mascarene island birds, pp. 5-89. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Cowles, G. S. 1987. The fossil record. In: Diamond, A.W. (ed.), Studies of Mascarene Island birds, pp. 90-100. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Holyoak, D. T. 1971. Comments on the extinct parrot Lophopsittacus mauritianus. Ardea 59: 50-51.
Text account compilers
Brooks, T., Khwaja, N., Mahood, S.
IUCN Red List evaluators
Butchart, S., Symes, A.
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2013) Species factsheet: Lophopsittacus mauritianus. Downloaded from
http://www.birdlife.org on 19/06/2013.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2013) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
http://www.birdlife.org on 19/06/2013.
This information is based upon, and updates, the information published in BirdLife International (2000)
Threatened birds of the world. Barcelona and Cambridge, UK: Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, BirdLife International (2004)
Threatened birds of the world 2004 CD-ROM and BirdLife International (2008) Threatened birds of the world 2008 CD-ROM. These sources provide the information for species accounts for the birds on the IUCN Red List.
To provide new information to update this factsheet or to correct any errors, please email BirdLife
To contribute to discussions on the evaluation of the IUCN Red List status of Globally Threatened Birds, please visit BirdLife's Globally Threatened Bird Forums.
Additional resources for this species
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