Tag Archives: Pomarea medozae ssp. fluya Murphy & Mathews

Monarcha fluxa (Murphy & Mathews)

Eiao Monarch (Monarcha fluxa)

The Eiao Monarch was described in 1928, originally as a subspecies of the Marquesan Monarch (Monarcha mendozae (Hartlaub)).

The males had the head, the nape, the chest and the upper tail coverts black with a very slight iridescence and variably mottled with white feathers, the wings were sooty black, the outermost one or two pairs of rectrices of the tail usually were white, but this character was very variable.

The forests that once covered Eiao are now highly reduced to little remnants; the last Eiao Monarchs were seen in 1977, all subsequent searches failed to find any remaining birds. [1][2][3]

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References:

[1] Robert Cushman Murphy; Gregory M. Mathews: Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. V. American Museum Novitates 337: 1-18. 1928
[2] D. T. Holyoak; Jean-Claude Thibault: Contribution à l’étude des oiseaux de Polynésie orientale. Mémoires du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle 127(1): 1-209. 1984
[3] Jean-Claude Thibault; Jean-Yves Meyer: Contemporary extinctions and population declines of the monarchs (Pomarea spp.) in French Polynesia, South Pacific. Oryx 35(1): 73-80. 2001

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edited: 08.05.2022