Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Spix's macaw
Summary
Spix's macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), also known as the little blue macaw, is a macaw species that was endemic to Brazil. It is a member of tribe Arini in the subfamily Arinae (Neotropical parrots), part of the family Psittacidae (the true parrots). It was first described by German naturalist Georg Marcgrave, when he was working in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil in 1638 and it is named for German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix, who collected a specimen in 1819 on the bank of the Rio São Francisco in northeast Bahia in Brazil. This bird has been completely extirpated from its natural range, and following a several-year survey, the IUCN officially declared it extinct in the wild in 2019.
The bird is a medium-size parrot weighing about , smaller than most of the large macaws. Its appearance is various shades of blue, with a grey-blue head, light blue underparts, and vivid blue upperparts. Males and females are almost identical in appearance; however, the females are slightly smaller.
The species inhabited riparian Caraibeira (Tabebuia aurea) woodland galleries in the drainage basin of the Rio São Francisco within the Caatinga dry forest climate of interior northeastern Brazil. It had a very restricted natural habitat due to its dependence on the tree for nesting, feeding and roosting. It feeds primarily on seeds and nuts of Caraiba and various Euphorbiaceae (spurge) shrubs, the dominant vegetation of the Caatinga. Due to deforestation in its limited range and specialized habitat, the bird was rare in the wild throughout the twentieth century. It has always been very rare in captivity, partly due to the remoteness of its natural range.
It is listed on CITES Appendix I, which makes international trade prohibited except for legitimate conservation, scientific or educational purposes. The IUCN regard the Spix's macaw as extinct in the wild. Its last known stronghold in the wild was in northeastern Bahia, Brazil and sightings were very rare. After a 2000 sighting of a male bird, the next and last sighting was in 2016.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.