| Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker | |
|---|---|
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Piciformes |
| Family: | Picidae |
| Genus: | Campephilus |
| Species: | C. principalis (? see text) |
| Subspecies: | Campephilus p. bairdii |
| Trinomial name | |
| Campephilus p. bairdii (Cassin, 1863) |
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The Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis bairdii) is a possibly extinct subspecies of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker that inhabit Cuba. Unlike it's American cousin, of which there had been sightings and a possible rediscovery, there haven't been any sightings in Cuba since a 1987 sighting of a lone female in the mountains of Cuba and thus presumed extinct[2].
While similar to the American Ivory-billed, it's slightly smaller and has minor plumage differences. A recent study [?] confirms that not only are the Cuban and American in fact genetically distinct (though the idea of the Cuban population as a separate species is not all a recent theory as John Cassin originally described it as a new species Campephilus bairdii), but also that they and the Imperial form a North American clade within Campephilus that appeared in the Mid-Pleistocene[3][4]. It [The recent study] does not explain who's related to whom though it implies that the Cuban is more closely related to the Imperial woodpecker, Campephilus imperialis. [5]. As for reclassification, the American Ornithologists' Union Committee on Classification and Nomenclature are not yet ready to list the American and Cuban as two separate species [6].
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