{"id":244946,"date":"2017-08-14T14:32:10","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T02:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciblogs.co.nz\/?p=244946"},"modified":"2022-08-17T20:59:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T20:59:38","slug":"kohatu-shag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/2017\/08\/14\/kohatu-shag\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiding in plain sight: how we found New Zealand\u2019s newest seabird, the K\u014dhatu Shag"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New Zealand was once a land of birds. A bustling and cosmopolitan metropolis of different species that had evolved in isolation until the arrival of humans. Scientists thought we knew the characters that made up this enigmatic ecosystem of a time long past, but we were wrong. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Hiding in plain sight, in fossil deposits throughout Northland, and natural history collections, was an entirely new species of seabird, the K\u014dhatu Shag, albeit sadly extinct. This research has just been published <\/a>in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution<\/em> and included collaborators from the Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory (University of Otago), Arizona State University, Birds New Zealand, Auckland Museum, Canterbury Museum and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.<\/p>\n

Since Victorian times, natural historians have been describing our living birds, differentiating species based on their plumage, behaviour, distribution and the shape of their bones. Sadly, many of these unique birds have become extinct, including the Auckland Islands\u2019 merganser, while others like the South Island takahe and New Zealand storm petrel, once thought extinct have been rediscovered. At the same time, palaeontologists have been describing our extinct birds.<\/p>\n

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New Zealand King Shag. New Zealand Birds Online and Mennobart van Eerden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The advent of the genetic revolution upended the status quo. Our research groups\u2019 work on the charismatic New Zealand blue eyed shags (Leucocarbo<\/em> spp.) illustrated just what DNA can show. The previously recognised Stewart Island Shag was in fact two different species: the Otago Shag and Foveaux Shag. DNA also showed the Otago Shag had lost most of its population size and genetic variation since human arrival, joining illustrious company including the takahe and kakapo.<\/p>\n

Ancient DNA brought about another revolution, showing many of our unique birds to be new arrivals, and facilitating the discovery of several new bird species in the process, including the Pouwa, the \u2018All Black\u2019 of swans<\/a>, and the K\u014dhatu Shag.<\/p>\n

Buoyed by our surprising discovery of the Otago and Foveaux Shag, our research group turned our attention to an even more endangered blue eyed shag, the New Zealand King Shag. Restricted to Marlborough Sounds for at least the past 240 years, the King Shag, now commonly seen from the Interisland ferry, numbers only around 800 individuals. However, in archaeological midden (rubbish dump) and fossil deposits around the North Island coastline, scientists have discovered hundreds of shag bones, some of which have been identified as \u2018King Shag\u2019.<\/p>\n

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K\u014dhatu Shag femur in Northland sand dune. Alan Tennyson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Working with New Zealand museums we isolated ancient DNA from these rare \u2018King Shag\u2019 bones and looked for differences in their shape that could indicate different species. Our genetic analyses revealed that King Shags had indeed lived in the lower North Island at the time of Polynesian arrival in New Zealand but had become restricted to Marlborough Sounds prior to the arrival of Europeans.<\/p>\n

Kawau K\u014dhatu: the shag from the stone age before our time<\/h3>\n

Surprisingly, hiding in plain sight, \u2018King Shag\u2019 bones from northern New Zealand represented a completely distinct species, new to science, that sadly went extinct shortly after Polynesian arrival in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

We named this species Leucocarbo septentrionalis<\/em>, meaning the northern most member of the genus Leucocarbo<\/em>. This new species deserved a kiwi name, a name people would be proud of. In conjunction with Auckland Museum, we approached Ng\u0101ti Kuri in Northland, in whose rohe the bones of our unique shag were found. After consultation with their Kaumatua, our shag had a name: Kawau K\u014dhatu or K\u014dhatu Shag, after the phrase \u2018Te Ao K\u014dhatu\u2019, meaning \u2018shag [Kawau] from the stone age before our time [Te Ao K\u014dhatu]\u2019. A fitting name indeed.<\/p>\n

The K\u014dhatu Shag, while no doubt looking superficially similar to its cousins the King, Otago and Foveaux Shag, was very different from the King Shag. As well as several osteological \u2018bumps on bones\u2019 differences, the K\u014dhatu Shag was slender and had shorter legs and wings compared to the King Shag \u2013 more like a Pied Shag or Great Cormorant than the \u2018flying brick\u2019 that is the King and Otago Shag.<\/p>\n

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Three views of K\u014dhatu Shag skull. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Jean Claude Stahl.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Love them or hate them, shags are an important part of our seabird metropolis. In fact, New Zealand is a biodiversity hotspot for shags. Shags can be heavily impacted by humans and even driven to extinction. Shags are also no doubt sentinels of ecosystem health and resilience, or lack thereof, that should be listened too \u2013 Spotted Shags are on the brink of extinction in Hauraki Gulf, an ecosystem that has undergone fundamental changes for the worse. Otago Shags are threatened by redevelopment plans in Oamaru.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to leave behind the antiquated view of the \u2018shag menace\u2019 and embrace our charismatic seabirds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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New Zealand was once a land of birds. A bustling and cosmopolitan metropolis of different species that had evolved in isolation until the arrival of humans. Scientists thought we knew the characters that made up this enigmatic ecosystem of a time long past, but we were wrong. Hiding in plain sight, in fossil deposits throughout … Continue reading “Hiding in plain sight: how we found New Zealand\u2019s newest seabird, the K\u014dhatu Shag”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40066,"featured_media":280694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87395],"tags":[87453,485,87495,87497,87531,87557,87561],"class_list":["post-244946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment-and-ecology","tag-extinct","tag-genetics","tag-king-shag","tag-kohatu-shag","tag-palaeogenetics","tag-seabird","tag-shag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40066"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}