The Laysan honeycreeper (Himatione fraithii), also known as the Laysan apapane or Laysan honeyeater, is an extinct species of finch that was endemic to the island of Laysan in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The bird was first recorded in 1828, and in 1892 it received its scientific name from Walter Rothschild, who placed it in the genus Himatione along with the ʻapapane. The specific name, fraithii, refers to George D. Freeth, the self-appointed governor of Laysan, but was misspelled. Rothschild attempted to emend it to freethi in a later publication. This was accepted by most subsequent authors throughout the 20th century, and the bird was also considered a subspecies of the ʻapapane, as H.sanguineafreethii, for most of this time. By the 21st century, after further research, the original name was reinstated and it was considered a full species again. As a Hawaiian honeycreeper, a grouping within the finch subfamily Carduelinae, its ancestors are thought to have come from Asia.
The Laysan honeycreeper was long and its wing measured . It was bright scarlet vermilion with a faint tint of golden orange on the head, breast and upper abdomen; the rest of its upper parts were orange scarlet. The lower abdomen was dusky gray that faded into brownish white, and the undertail covert feathers were grayish. The wings, tail, bill, and legs were dark brown, and the iris was black with a brown outline. Immature birds were brown with paler lower parts, and had green edges to their wing-covert feathers. The bill was slender and downturned. The sexes were alike, though the bill, wings, and tail were slightly shorter in the female. The ʻapapane differs from the Laysan honeycreeper in features such as being blood-red overall and having a longer bill. The song of the Laysan honeycreeper was described as low and sweet, consisting of several notes. Laysan is a remote coral island with an area of . The honeycreeper lived throughout, but was most abundant in the interior among tall grass and low bushes near the open plain that bordered the island's lagoon.
This bird was very active and, though less trusting than other birds, sometimes entered buildings to hunt moths and to roost at night. It was nectarivorous and insectivorous and, unlike the ʻapapane, also foraged on the ground. It gathered nectar and insects from flowers, such as caterpillars and moths called millers, only eating the soft parts of the latter. The nest was made of fine grass and rootlets with some dry grass. The breeding season was probably between January and June, and the clutch size was four or five eggs. The eggs were glossless white, with blotches and spots at the larger end. A typical egg measured . The bird did not seem to be abundant when discovered and was considered the rarest of the island's birds. In 1903, domestic rabbits were introduced to the island and proceeded to destroy its vegetation. By the visit of the Tanager Expedition in 1923, Laysan had become barren and desert-like, and only three Laysan honeycreepers were found, one of which was filmed. A few days later, on April 23, a sandstorm hit the island, and the last birds perished due to lack of cover. The destruction of Laysan's vegetation led to the extinction of three out of five of its endemic land birds.
Taxonomy
The Laysan honeycreeper was first recorded on Laysan Island on April 3, 1828, by C. Isenbeck, surgeon of the Russian ship Moller, which was visiting the Hawaiian Islands (then called the Sandwich Islands, and the expedition called Laysan "Moller"). His report was published in an 1834 article by the German naturalist Heinrich von Kittlitz. Isenbeck referred to a "red bird" and a "humming bird" ("" in German), in both cases probably referring to the honeycreeper, the latter due to it feeding on nectar.
In 1892, the British zoologist and banker Walter Rothschild described and named seven new bird species from Hawaii, based on specimensincluding a series of ten honeycreeper specimens from Laysanobtained by the New Zealand collectors Henry C. Palmer and George C. Munro in 1891. These and other collectors had been sent to the Hawaiian Islands in 1890–93 to collect specimens for Rothschild's Natural History Museum at Tring in England.
Rothschild named the honeycreeper Himatione fraithii (the type specimen was an adult male) and classified it as a member of Drepanidae, commonly called the Hawaiian honeycreepers, which was recognized as a family at the time. He found it to resemble the ʻapapane (H.sanguinea), also of the genus Himatione, which is found across the main Hawaii archipelago, differing in several details. The generic name is derived from the Greek word himation, a crimson cape worn by the Spartans to war, in reference to the color of the ʻapapane.
The specific name refers to George D. Freeth, the self-appointed US governor of Laysan, manager of the guano-mining operations there, and amateur naturalist, who had assisted Palmer and Munro. The misspelling of Freeth's name, fraithii, may have been due to a miscommunication or erroneous assumption, and his full name was not mentioned in the description. From 1893 to 1900, Rothschild published a three-part monograph on the birds of Laysan, with further observations about the honeycreeper, which he referred to as the "Laysan honey-eater". Though some related green species had previously also been considered part of the genus Himatione, he agreed with the American zoologist Robert C. L. Perkins that those should be moved to Chlorodrepanis, and restricted Himatione to the red species: the ʻapapane and the Laysan honeycreeper. By this time, Rothschild had realized that he had misspelled Freeth's name, and attempted to emend the spelling to freethi, but also used the spellings fraithi and freethii in sections of the work. The German zoologist Hugo H. Schauinsland used the spelling frethii in 1899.
After the original description, all the spellings of the name were used by different authors, but the original fraithii was only used a few times. The German ornithologist Ernst Hartert used the original spelling in 1919 and also considered the bird a subspecies of ʻapapane, as H.sanguineafraithii. This classification was followed by most other taxonomists and the trinomial name was used throughout the 20th century. In 1950, the American ornithologist Dean Amadon considered the spelling fraithii to be a ('slip of the pen', or misspelling), and justified using freethii instead, since Rothschild later corrected the name to that. In 2005, the American ornithologist Harold D. Pratt also indicated that the name had been corrected within the original description. In 2011, the American ornithologist Peter Pyle pointed out that Rothschild had not corrected the name until the first part of his monograph was published in 1893, and that he also appears to have realized his emendation was inappropriate, since he reverted to the original spelling fraithi in the third part. Pyle therefore concluded that according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the name should not be emended and the original spelling should be reinstated.
In 2015, Pratt, Pyle, and the American ornithologist Reginald E. David formally proposed to the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) that the Laysan honeycreeper should be split into its own full species again and its specific name changed back to fraithii, based on recent research that supported these conclusions. They also suggested that the bird should be listed in the Checklist of North American Birds under the common English name "Laysan honeycreeper" rather than "Laysan ʻapapane", a name that had by then become popular with some writers, as this would also require a modifier for the name of the ʻapapane. They considered the name "Laysan ʻapapane" a modern retrofitting of Hawaiian names to species whose Hawaiian names are unknown or never had one to begin with, and noted that Native Hawaiians never appear to have visited Laysan Island, which has no traditional Hawaiian name either. These authors stated that they supported the use of Hawaiian neologisms for local use, but thought the AOU should continue designating English names using loan words where appropriate, but not create new ones in other languages. They also found it appropriate that at least one species of Hawaiian honeycreeper would retain the word "honeycreeper" in its common name, for sentimental reasons. In 2015 the AOU implemented these propositions in their checklist. The changes were also adopted by the International Ornithological Committee in their world list of birds the same year.
There are at least 105 known specimens (six of them mounted) of the Laysan honeycreeper in museums across the world, but two specimens appear to have gone missing. Some museums have multiple specimens, including 24 in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, 20 (including the type specimen) in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and 20 in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. There are also at least two skeletons, three nests, and one egg preserved. The known specimens were collected between 1892 and 1913. The ratio of males to females between adult specimens in museum collections is 1.7:1.
Evolution
In 1899, Schauinsland considered the Laysan honeycreeper an example of how a new species may arise through isolation and noted its resemblance to the ʻapapane. Perkins stated in 1903 that the Laysan honeycreeper was descended from the ʻapapane colonizing the island, and he divided the Hawaiian honeycreepers into two main groups. Amadon noted in 1950 that although the Laysan finch (Telespiza cantans) and the Laysan honeycreeper spent more time on the ground than their relatives, their power of flight was seemingly not reduced. He pointed out that the length of their wings was rather short, which perhaps indicated a beginning tendency in such a direction. The wing of the finch is shorter, perhaps because it had reached Laysan earlier than the honeycreeper.
In 1976, the American geologist Seymour O. Schlanger and botanist George W. Gillett proposed that because Laysan had been a raised coral island until 18,000 years ago, whereafter erosion and tectonic subsidence reduced its height, it could have been a refugium for upland and montane species that had adapted to the drastic changes in habitat. They pointed to the Laysan honeycreeper and Laysan finch as evidence for this, being the only Hawaiian honeycreepers living close to beaches. The American ornithologists Storrs L. Olson and Helen F. James considered the Laysan honeycreeper a distinct species from the ʻapapane in 1982, but without elaboration.
Olson and the American ornithologist Alan C. Ziegler stated in 1995 that while the Laysan honeycreeper was often considered a subspecies of ʻapapane, its skull features indicate it was distinct and probably more primitive, and therefore perhaps a remnant of an earlier evolutionary stage rather than being particularly specialized for the conditions on Laysan. They speculated that if this bird could survive on Laysan, there could also be a niche for a relative on the nearby island of Nīhoa. They also argued that Hawaiian honeycreepers are not actually an upland group, but that this perception of them as such comes from them having been wiped out from lowland areas of Hawaii in prehistoric times by human-made habitat destruction, and that many fossils of the group (including of Himatione) have been found in areas just above sea level. They therefore disagreed with the idea that the species found there were a remnant of upland populations or necessarily ancient occupants.