Rodrigues rail

Extinct bird of the rail family that was endemic to Rodrigues

The Rodrigues rail (Erythromachus leguati), also known as Leguat's gelinote or Leguat's rail, is an extinct species of the rail family that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues. The bird was first documented from life by two accounts from 1691–93 and 1725–26. Subfossil remains were later discovered and correlated with the old accounts in 1874, and the species was named E. leguati in Leguat's honour. It is generally kept in its own genus, Erythromachus, but has sometimes been assigned to the genus Aphanapteryx along with its close relative the red rail (A. bonasia) of Mauritius; their relationship with other rails is unclear. The Rodrigues rail was about long and weighed at least It was described as having grey plumage, a red beak, red legs, and a naked red patch around the eye. The beak was long and curved downwards. It was flightless and fed on tortoise eggs. It was described as being attracted to red objects, which humans exploited while hunting it. The Rodrigues rail is believed to have become extinct in the mid 18th century mainly because of predation by introduced cats and hunting.

In 1848, the English zoologist Hugh Edwin Strickland called attention to a bird mentioned in the French traveller François Leguat's 1708 memoir A New Voyage to the East Indies about his stay on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues from 1691–93. Leguat referred to the birds as "gelinottes" (translated as "wood hens"), a name Strickland thought implied the grouse of Europe, though this was not consistent with the form of the beak described by Leguat. Strickland was unable to classify the bird further, but noted similarities with the dodo and kiwi, based on unidentified birds from Mauritius illustrated by the travellers Pieter van den Broecke and Sir Thomas Herbert, which he thought related. Strickland also noted similarities with a bird from Mauritius, which would later be identified as the red rail (Aphanapteryx bonasia). Milne Edwards connected Leguat's account with three bones (a sternum, a tarsometatarsus, and a fragmentary skull) found in caves of the Plaine Corail region, Rodrigues. He recognised their similarity to those of the red rail, while noting it supposedly had a straighter beak (as described by Leguat). Milne Edwards coined the generic name Erythromachus from the Greek words eruthros, "red", and makhç, "battle" (also translated as "hostile to red"), in reference to its attraction to red objects, and the specific name is in honour of Leguat. The American ornithologist James Greenway suggested in 1967 that Leguat's description referred to wind blown purple swamphens, since the word grey is sometimes used synonymously with blue in old descriptions. This idea has not been accepted by other commentators. Today, it is widely accepted that Leguat's memoirs represent credible observations of local birds in life. His observations on the local fauna are considered some of the first cohesive accounts of animal behaviour in the wild.

Apart from being a close relative to the red rail, the relationships of the Rodrigues rail are uncertain and the two are commonly listed as separate genera, Aphanapteryx and Erythromachus, but have sometimes been united as species of Aphanapteryx. In 1945, the French palaeontologist Jean Piveteau found skull features of the two species different enough for generic separation, and in 1977, the American ornithologist Storrs L. Olson stated that though the two species were similar and derived from the same stock, they had also diverged considerably, and should possibly be kept separate. Based on geographic location and the morphology of the nasal bones, Olson suggested that they were related to the genera Gallirallus, Dryolimnas, Atlantisia, and Rallus. The American ornithologist Bradley C. Livezey was unable to determine the affinities of the Rodrigues and red rail in 1998, stating that some of the features uniting them and some other rails were associated with the loss of flight rather than common descent. He also suggested that the grouping of the Rodrigues and red rail into the same genus may have been influenced by their geographical distribution. Mourer Chauviré and colleagues also considered the two as belonging to separate genera. Rails have reached many oceanic archipelagos, which has frequently led to speciation and evolution of flightlessness. According to the British researchers Anthony S. Cheke and Julian P. Hume in 2008, the fact that the red rail lost much of its feather structure indicates it was isolated for a long time. These rails may be of Asian origin, like many other Mascarene birds. In 2019, Hume supported the distinction of the two genera, and cited the relation between the extinct Mauritius scops owl and the Rodrigues scops owl as another example of the diverging evolutionary paths on these islands. He stated that the relationships of the Rodrigues and red rails was more unclear than that of other extinct Mascarene rails, with many of their distinct features being related to flightlessness and modifications to their jaws due to their diet, suggesting a long period of isolation. He suggested their ancestors could have arrived on the Mascarenes during the middle Miocene at the earliest, but it may have happened more recently. The speed with which these features evolved may also have been affected by gene flow, resource availability, and climate events. Flightlessness can evolve rapidly in rails, sometimes repeatedly within the same groups, as in Dryolimnas, so the distinctness of the Rodrigues and red rails may not have taken long to evolve; some other specialised rails evolved in less than 1–3 million years. Hume suggested that the two rails were probably related to Dryolimnas, but their considerably different morphology made it difficult to establish how. In general, rails are adept at colonising islands, and can become flightless within a few generations in environments without predators, yet this also makes them vulnerable to human activities. Hume examined all available upper beaks in 2019, but found no differences in curvature. The Rodrigues rail differed from the red rail by having a broader and shorter skull, longer and lower nostrils, a proportionately longer humerus, a shorter, stouter femur, as well as a considerably different plumage, based on early descriptions. The German zoologist Hermann Schlegel thought it depicted a species of dodo (which he called Didus herbertii) from Rodrigues when he drew the outline in 1854, and that it was the species mentioned by Leguat.