Morepork

The morepork (Ninox novaeseelandiae), also called the Tasmanian spotted owl, is a small brown owl found throughout New Zealand and Tasmania.

Taxonomy

Two subspecies, the Lord Howe boobook and the Norfolk Island boobook, became extinct during the 20th century.

Janette Norman and colleagues tested the cytochrome b DNA of three subspecies (as well as the powerful and rufous owls) to ascertain whether the closest relative was used in breeding with the last surviving female of the Norfolk boobook. They discovered that although the Norfolk boobook was similar in plumage to the Tasmanian boobook, that it was genetically much closer to the New Zealand subspecies. In fact, the two were so close genetically that they considered whether the Norfolk boobook should be recognised as a separate taxon at all, although they conceded the two were easily distinguishable in appearance and so maintained the three as subspecies; the Tasmanian boobook only diverged by 2.7% from the other two, while the powerful and rufous owls diverged by 4.4% from each other. Leading from this, the southern boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the Handbook of the Birds of the World, however several authors, including Les Christidis and Walter Boles, contested that the data had been misinterpreted from the Norman study, which hadn't sampled any Australian mainland boobooks at all. They treated the three taxa (southern, Tasmanian boobooks and moreporks) as a single species.