Species we have lost over the last quarter of a century

I believe it was a conversation with myself you are recalling; from photographs of the melanistic Pampas Cats at Cincinatti, I have a suspicion that they had some Geoffroy's Cat lineage; largely due to the shape of the head and length of the pelage, as well as the fact that although melanism is not unknown in wild Pampas Cat, it is extremely uncommon, whilst it is a common mutation in Geoffroy's cat.

Suppose we will never know, however.

 

Pigeon taxa lost over the past 25 years

Yellow-eyed Pigeon (Columba eversmanni) - last held at Riga in 1991. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Grey-faced Quail-dove (Geotrygon caniceps) - last held at Cleres Zoological Park in 1990. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Brown Cuckoo-dove (Macropygia amboinensis) - last held at Zoo Berlin in the early 2000's. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of individuals in Australia.

White-crowned Pigeon (Patagioenas leucocephala) - last held at Veldhoven NOP in 2011. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Scaly-naped Pigeon (Patagioenas squamosa) - last held at Dierenpark Emmen in 1995. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

African Mourning Dove (Streptopelia decipiens) - last held at Tiergarten Schönbrunn in 2003. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of wild individuals.

White-faced Cuckoo-dove (Turacoena manadensis) - last held at Bristol Zoo in 1992. The only photograph of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery is of a captive individual in the USA.

Black-billed Wood-dove (Turtur abyssinicus) - last held at Cleres Zoological Park in 1993. The only photograph of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery is of a captive individual in the USA.

Galapagos Dove (Zenaida galapagoensis) - last held at Walsrode in 1997. Although I know of a few Zoochatters who have film photographs of the taxon, the only photograph of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery is of a wild individual on the Galapagos Islands.

American Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) - last held at Rotterdam in 1990. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of captive and wild individuals in the USA.

Inca Dove (Columbina inca) - last held at Paris Menagerie in 1991. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of captive individuals in the USA.

Spinifex Pigeon (Geophaps plumifera) - last held at Birdland in the mid-2000's. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of captive and wild individuals in Australia.

Madagascar Green-pigeon (Treron australis) - last held at Zoo Berlin in 1997. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Orange-breasted Green-pigeon (Treron bicinctus) - last held at Jesperhus Feriepark in 2009. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Little Green-pigeon (Treron olax) - last held at Twycross in 1998. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

White-bellied Green-pigeon (Treron sieboldii) - last held at Zoo Děčín in 2001. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Singing Green-pigeon (Treron sphenurus) - last held at Rotterdam in 2004. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Chestnut-bellied Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula brenchleyi) - last held at Moscow in 1998. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

New Caledonian Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula goliath) - last held at Walsrode in 1994. A single photograph of one of the individuals held has been posted to the Zoochat gallery:



Spectacled Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula perspicillata) - last held at ZSL London in 1999. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Pink-bellied Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula poliocephala) - last held at Bristol in 1992. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of captive and wild individuals in the Philippines.

Purple-tailed Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula rufigaster) - last held at ZSL London in 2010. The only photographs of this taxon in the Zoochat gallery are of captive and wild individuals in Asia.

Zoe's Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula zoeae) - last held at ZSL London in 2013. A handful of photographs of this taxon in Europe have been posted in the Zoochat gallery, for instance the following image of the final individual:



Black-backed Fruit-dove (Ptilinopus cinctus) - last held at ZSL London in 1994. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

Black-chinned Fruit-dove (Ptilinopus leclancheri) - last held at Tierpark Berlin in 2013. Although relatively common in European collections in the timespan concerned, the only photographs of this taxon posted to the Zoochat gallery have been of captive individuals in the Philippines and USA.

Ornate Fruit-dove (Ptilinopus ornatus) - last held at Plzen in 2010. No photographs of this taxon have been posted to the Zoochat gallery.

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It is evident that for whatever reason, even those pigeon taxa which have been kept in European collections within the very recent past have recieved little attention from Zoochatters. However, I am reasonably confident that Zoochatters may be able to upload photographs for a reasonable number of the taxa noted above - especially those held at Walsrode and ZSL London, I suspect.

 

A very good point indeed and a lesson we sorely need to learn; as noted in the post regarding pigeons which I just uploaded, there are a number of taxa which were present within the UK - never mind Europe - in the last 5 years or so which are entirely unrepresented in the Gallery, and which are now absent from European collections.

In theory the exercise would reap more reliable dividends if I had restricted the timespan to 15 years, of course - the point in time at which digital cameras started making their way onto the market - but it would be much less fun that way

 

I have never heard Wedge-tailed Green Pigeons called that before. Is that because it is a direct translation of a German name (i.e. from Zootierliste)?

 

I'm not sure your position is entirely tenable TLD. The Cincinnati Pampas Cats were all derived from three founder animals, a wild-caught pair imported from Paraguay in 1972 (hence unlikely either would be hybrids) and a male in 1981 (I don't know if this one was wild-caught or captive-bred, so if there was any hybrid blood it would be from this one).

However, it is simply not true that melanism is "extremely uncommon" in Pampas Cats. You might want to read (for example) Recurrent Evolution of Melanism in South American Felids where studies of melanism in South American cats showed (in their study areas) frequency rates of 25% in Pampas Cats versus 20% in Geoffroy's Cats. Indeed the researchers use the words "a relatively high prevalence of melanism" (referring to all three of their study species) which is at odds with your belief.

Basically, given that the three founders at the zoo were known to be Pampas Cats and that melanism in Pampas Cats is not uncommon anyway, it is most likely they are simply melanistic Pampas Cats.

 

Never heard of the taxon until I came across it on ZTL, so that would indeed explain it where a common name on ZTL doesn't match with the *actual* common name I have been trying to correct them, but that one slipped through.

Fair enough I had never seen that study before; good to see some small carnivore research taking place in open-access!

That said, regarding my other point, wild origin may not preclude hybrid descent - introgressive hybridisation between Pampas Cat, Oncilla and Geoffroy's Cat in wild populations is recorded. The article you link to actually mentions this in passing:

This quote cites two studies (sadly not open-access, although the abstracts are interesting) which also discuss this matter:

Inter-species hybridization among Neotropical cats of the genus Leopardus, and evidence for an introgressive hybrid zone between L. geoffroyi and L... - PubMed - NCBI

Molecular data reveal complex hybridization and a cryptic species of neotropical wild cat. - PubMed - NCBI

However, it would appear from the above two studies that Oncilla/Pampas lineage is more likely than Geoffroys/Pampas lineage. The Cincinatti animals could, of course, have been pure individuals - but I still think they don't look quite right

 

All mention of it seems to have been deleted from ZTL, but certainly at one point there was a claim that there had been a Cape Clawless there until something like 1986........

 

They were cited and linked to in the open-access article which Chli posted

 

There were links *to* the original articles within the reference citing them so I just followed the links.

I've found the open-access link to the first article now, however.