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Tyto tenebricosa
– Least Concern
Taxonomy
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Kingdom:
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ANIMALIA
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Phylum:
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CHORDATA
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Class:
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AVES
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Order:
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STRIGIFORMES
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Family:
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TYTONIDAE
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Scientific Name:
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Tyto tenebricosa
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Species Authority:
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(Gould, 1845)
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Synonym/s:
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Tyto multipunctata Mathews, 1912
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Common Name/s:
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SOOTY OWL (Eng)
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Taxonomic Notes:
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Tyto tenebricosa and T. multipunctata (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) have been lumped into T. tenebricosa following Norman et al. (2002).
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Assessment Information
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Red List Category & Criteria:
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LC ver 3.1 (2001)
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Year Assessed:
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2006
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Assessor/s:
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BirdLife International
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Evaluator/s:
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Butchart, S. & Temple, H. (BirdLife International Red List Authority)
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Geographic Range
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Range Description:
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Tyto tenebricosa has a large range along the west coast of Australia and on New Guinea (Indonesia and Papua New Guinea), with an estimated global Extent of Occurrence of 100,000-1,000,000 km². In Australia, it prefers deep, wet gully forest dominated by eucalypts, occurring in drier forest only when hunting; in New Guinea it occurs in lowland and montane rainforest and Araucaria pine forest, emerging into subalpine grassland and alpine boulderfields and ridges at altitudes of up to 4000 m to hunt (Bruce 1999). The global population size has not been quantified, but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population size criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. less than 10,000 mature individuals in conjunction with appropriate decline rates and subpopulation qualifiers). Global population trends have not been quantified; there is evidence of a population decline (del Hoyo et al. 1999), but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern. Subspecies multipunctata, sometimes treated as a separate species, is a restricted-range taxon, being found only in a substantial area of rainforest in north-east Queensland (Australia), between Shiptons Flat (south of Cooktown), south to Bluewater range (north of Townsville), and inland to Mt Carbine, Atherton and Ravenshoe. Its range may extend to south of Townsville, to Mt Elliott. It is common within its range (S. Garnett in litt. 2000), and has been estimated to number 2,000 breeding pairs (Higgins 1999) and to be stable (S. Garnett in litt. 2000). Some of its habitat has been cleared for agriculture, but a large area remains (Garnett 1992), and all logging has since stopped. There is some fragmentation of its former habitat, but in other areas, rainforest is rapidly expanding to the west. All north-east Queensland bird taxa went through a severe bottleneck during the last ice age according to climatic and vegetation modelling, when the available habitat was reduced to tiny fragments. The present available habitat is significantly larger, and as such, this subspecies is not considered to be at risk (Higgins 1999).
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Countries:
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Native:
Australia; Indonesia; Papua New Guinea
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Habitat and Ecology
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