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The southern boobook (''Ninox boobook'') is a species of owl native to mainland Australia, southern New Guinea, Timor and the Sunda Islands. It was considered to be the same species (conspecific) as the morepork of New Zealand until 2013. Birds from Tasmania belong to a taxon, ''leucopsis'' which appear to be more closely related to (and hence treated as a subspecies of) the New Zealand species. Eleven subspecies are recognized. This bird is the smallest owl on the Australian mainland and is the continent's most widely distributed and common owl. It is predominantly brown in plumage with grey-green or yellow-green eyes. It feeds on insects and small vertebrates. ==Taxonomy== English ornithologist John Latham described the boobook owl as ''Strix boobook'' in 1801, taking its species epithet from a local Aboriginal word for the bird. John Gould described ''Athene marmorata'' in 1846 from a specimen in South Australia; this is now regarded as a synonym.〔 In his 1865 ''Handbook to the Birds of Australia'', Gould recognised three species, all of which he placed in the genus ''Spiloglaux'': ''S. marmoratus'' from South Australia, ''S. boobook'', which is widespread across the continent and Tasmania, and ''S. maculatus'' from southeastern Australia and Tasmania. The common name comes from the two-tone call of the bird, and has also been transcribed as "mopoke".〔 George Caley had recorded the native name as ''buck-buck'' during the earliest days of the colony, and reporting that early settlers had called it cuckoo owl as its call was reminiscent of the common cuckoo. However, he added, "The settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the ''Cuckoo'', as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the instances they point out." Gould recorded local aboriginal names: ''Goor-goor-da'' (Western Australia), ''Mel-in-de-ye'' (Port Essington), and ''Koor-koo'' (South Australia).〔 Alternative common names include spotted owl and brown owl. Both Gerlof Fokko Mees and Ernst Mayr regarded the taxonomy of the boobook owl as extremely challenging, the latter remarking that it was "one of the most difficult problems I have ever encountered". In a 1998 paper, Janette Norman and colleagues tested the cytochrome ''b'' DNA of three subspecies (as well as the powerful and rufous owls) to ascertain whether the closest relative was used in breeding with the last surviving female of the Norfolk boobook. They discovered that although the Norfolk boobook is similar in plumage to the Tasmanian boobook, that it is genetically much closer to the New Zealand morepork. In fact, the two are so close genetically that they considered whether the Norfolk boobook should be recognised as a separate taxon at all, though conceded they are easily distinguishable in appearance and so maintained the three as subspecies; the Tasmanian boobook only diverged by 2.7% from the other two, while the powerful and rufous owls diverged by 4.4% from each other. Leading from this, the southern boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the ''Handbook of the Birds of the World''; however, several authors, including Les Christidis and Walter Boles, contended that the data from the Norman study, which had not sampled any Australian mainland boobooks at all, had been misinterpreted. They treated the three taxa (southern plus Tasmanian boobooks and moreporks) as a single species. Examining both morphological and genetic (cytochrome ''b'') characters, Michael Wink and colleagues concluded that the southern boobook is distinct from the morepork and Tasmanian boobook (which should be raised to species status as ''Ninox leucopsis''), and that it is instead the sister taxon to the barking owl (''N. connivens''). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Southern boobook」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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