Dittebrand
Nazca Booby in flight - Galápagos
Nazca Booby - Suarez Point, Española Island in the Galápagos
Of the six different species of boobies in the world, none have had such an identity crisis as the Nazca booby.
During his trip to the Galapagos Islands in 1897, the British banker, politician and zoologist Walter Rothschild identified the bird as the Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), which lives along the Peruvian coast. He later reclassified it as a new species, Sula granti, before deciding that it was in fact a subspecies of the masked booby, to which it bears many similarities.
It was only fairly recently, after mitochondrial DNA analyses, that the Nazca Booby was once again considered a species of its own — and not conspecific with the masked booby — and reverted back to its previous scientific name, Sula granti.
Nazca Booby in flight - Galápagos
Nazca Booby - Suarez Point, Española Island in the Galápagos
Of the six different species of boobies in the world, none have had such an identity crisis as the Nazca booby.
During his trip to the Galapagos Islands in 1897, the British banker, politician and zoologist Walter Rothschild identified the bird as the Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), which lives along the Peruvian coast. He later reclassified it as a new species, Sula granti, before deciding that it was in fact a subspecies of the masked booby, to which it bears many similarities.
It was only fairly recently, after mitochondrial DNA analyses, that the Nazca Booby was once again considered a species of its own — and not conspecific with the masked booby — and reverted back to its previous scientific name, Sula granti.