Townsend's Shearwater

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Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Procellariiformes
Family:	Procellariidae
Genus:	Puffinus
Species:	P. auricularis

Binomial name

Puffinus auricularis
Townsend, 1890

Synonyms

Puffinus auricularis auricularis

Townsend's Shearwater, Puffinus auricularis is a rare seabird of the tropics from the family Procellariidae.

Its relationships are unresolved. Its closest relatives are probably but not certainly the Hawaiian Shearwater (Puffinus newelli) and possibly the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) (Austin, 1996; Austin et al, 2004). It formerly contained the former as a subspecies and was long considered a subspecies of the latter. The relationship of the Rapa Shearwater, P. (newelli) myrtae in regards to these species are also in need of research; this taxon was until recently placed in P.assimilis (Austin et al, 2004).

This species breeds around Cerro Evermann on Isla Socorro in the Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico. The main threat to this species comes from feral cats introduced to Socorro in the early 1970s. Sheep are also destroying breeding habitat. The species bred on Isla Clarión until 1988, where habitat and nesting sites were destroyed by introduced pigs, sheep and rabbits.

[edit] References

Austin, Jeremy J. (1996): Molecular Phylogenetics of Puffinus Shearwaters: Preliminary Evidence from Mitochondrial Cytochrome b Gene Sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 6(1): 77–88. doi:10.1006/mpev.1996.0060 (HTML abstract)

Austin, Jeremy J.; Bretagnolle, Vincent & Pasquet, Eric (2004): A global molecular phylogeny of the small Puffinus shearwaters and implications for systematics of the Little-Audubon's Shearwater complex. Auk 121(3): 847–864. DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2004)121[0847:AGMPOT]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract

BirdLife International (2006). Puffinus auricularis. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes a range map and justification for why this species is critically endangered