Mariana Mallard - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The taxonomic status of the Mariana Mallard is disputed, since it resembles an intermediate of the Mallard and the Pacific Black Duck, two closely related allopatric species which frequently hybridise. Its males had two intergrading color morphs, called the "platyrhynchos" and the "superciliosa" types after the species they resembled more. It was first scientifically described by Tommaso Salvadori as full species in the genus Anas, named after its collector, the French zoologist Emile Oustalet. Salvadori suggested it was related to the Pacific Black Duck. It was previously known to the Chamorro people, who called it ngånga' (palao) in Chamorro, and to the Carolinian people, who called it ghereel'bwel in Carolinian.

After Salvadori, most taxonomists, such as Dean Amadon and Ernst Mayr, considered it a subspecies of the Mallard. Yoshimaro Yamashina examined those specimens in Japanese museums in 1948, and decided that the Mariana Mallard was an example of hybrid speciation, and was descended from the Mallard and the Pacific Black Duck's Palau subspecies (Anas superciliosa pelewensis). However, no molecular genetic evidence is available to support this hypothesis. Some scientists, such as Jean Delacour, have considered the Mariana Mallard a simple hybrid, so it was absent from Delacour's four-volume monograph on the ducks and from the IUCN Red List. If Yamashina's hypothesis is correct, the Mariana Mallard would have presumably evolved into near species status in only about ten thousand years.

Neither Mariana Mallards nor their progenitor species are known from fossils on the Marianas, casting into doubt the assumption that a resident Black Duck population had been long established on the islands. However, most rock shelters and caves on the Marianas were obliterated in the 1944 Battle of Guam. A species of flightless duck is known from a prehistoric bone found on Rota in 1994; was apparently not closely related to the Mariana Mallard.