Rodrigues Rail - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

In 1848, Hugh Strickland wrote that a bird similar to the Red Rail of Mauritius was mentioned in François Leguat's memoirs, but was unable to classify it further because of a lack of remains. He wrote that it may have been a grouse or gallinaceous bird. Unlike the Red Rail and other extinct Mascarene birds, the Rodrigues Rail was not illustrated by contemporaneous artists. Ornithologist Storrs L. Olson described reconstructions made for Walter Rothschild's book Extinct Birds (1907) and Masauji Hachusika's The Dodo and kindred birds (1953) as "rather fanciful". Frederick William Frohawk based his restoration in the former book on an outline sketch, which was in turn based on a 17th century sketch drawn by Sir Thomas Herbert, which is now known to depict the Red Rail. Hermann Schlegel thought it depicted a species of Dodo (Didus herbertii) from Rodrigues when he drew the outline in 1854, and that it was the species mentioned by Leguat.

In 1874, Alphonse Milne-Edwards connected Leguat's and Tafforet's descriptions with some bones found in a cave on Rodrigues, and recognised their similarity to those of the Red Rail. Milne-Edwards coined the generic name Erthyromachus from the Greek words for "red" and "battle", in reference to its behaviour towards red objects, and the specific name is in honour of Leguat. The junior synonym Miserythrus, from "red" and "hatred", was coined by Alfred Newton in 1893, also referring to this behaviour. James Greenway wrote that Leguat's description referred to wind-blown Purple Swamphens. This has not been accepted by other authors.

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. Edward Norton and Albert Günther first generically synonymised them in 1879 because of their skeletal similarities. It has been suggested that because of these species' geographic locations and the morphology of the nasal bones, they may have been related to the genera Gallirallus, Dryolimnas, Atlantisia, and Rallus. Rails have reached many oceanic archipelagos, which has frequently lead to speciation and the evolution of flightnessness.