Two New Species of Already-Endangered Screech Owls Discovered in Amazon Rainforest
Published:30 Mar.2021 Source:Field Museum
The Amazon rainforest is teeming with creatures unknown to science -- and that's just in broad daylight. After dark, the forest is a whole new place, alive with nocturnal animals that have remained even more elusive to scientists than their day-shift counterparts. In a new paper in Zootaxa, researchers described two new species of screech owls that live in the Amazon and Atlantic forests, both of which are already critically endangered.
"Screech owls are considered a well-understood group compared to some other types of organisms in these areas," says John Bates, curator of birds at the Field Museum in Chicago and one of the study's authors. "But when you start listening to them and comparing them across geography, it turns out that there are things that people hadn't appreciated. That's why these new species are being described."