A working list of breeding bird species of the New Zealand region at firsthuman contact

We present an annotated working list of the bird species breeding in New Ze aland (luring the late Pleistocene and Holocene, up to the time of human co ntact. New Zealand is defined as including the three main islands and the s urrounding smaller islands, plus outlying island groups from Norfolk Island in the northwest, the Kermadec, Chatham, Bounty, Antipodes, Campbell, Auck land,:Snares, to Macquarie Islands, but excluding islands south of Macquari e Island and the Ross Dependency. Inclusions or exclusions of species from the list were based on specified criteria. We include only species with a b reeding population and not vagrants that occur in New Zealand but which bre ed elsewhere. Species with validly published names were included if there w as fossil evidence for a breeding population before human contact. Species with a breeding population at the time of European contact were included un less contrary evidence from the fossil record indicates that they actually colonised after human settlement. Species without a fossil record were incl uded if a breeding population exists on a relatively undisturbed island wit hin the New Zealand archipelago as defined above. Species now present on th e main islands were excluded if they are absent from all well-documented fo ssil faunas. Species were excluded from the breeding fauna and treated as v agrants where sustained breeding has not been demonstrated. The phylogeneti c species concept is applied both to fossil and to living taxa. The late Qu aternary fossil record of birds in New Zealand is excellent, and the contri bution of extinct taxa to the total list is understood at least as well as that of the surviving taxa. Many taxa presently recognised at subspecific l evel are treated here as full species. Twelve extinct species whose former presence is known from fossil evidence, but for which no description has be en published, are listed under informal species designations. Taxonomic con siderations limited the extent to which the main list could reflect present understanding of the diversity of the avifauna; some undescribed species a re at present subsumed under one species name. Where previous taxonomic pub lications provide precedence, available names at the species-level have bee n used. A supplementary hypothetical species list includes all nomenclatura l changes signalled in extensive annotations to the main list. In this list we accept 245 species in 110 genera representing 46 families; 176 species were endemic to the archipelago. Preliminary biogeographic analyses based o n the composition of the supplementary list show that there were four separ ate regional faunas: a northern subtropical fauna (Norfolk, Kermadecs); the major fauna of the main islands (North, South, Stewart, and offshore islan ds); a Chathams fauna (Chatham Islands only); and a subantarctic fauna on t he southern islands. Species with wider distributions formed link groups. T he origin and compositions of the regional avifaunas and their endemic spec ies differ with their geographic position, climate, and proximity to source faunas. Instances of speciation in groups such as the Coenocorypha snipe a nd Petroica flycatchers, and adaptive radiations in groups including moa an d acanthisittid wrens, show that there are many avenues for research on the rate of evolution in island and mainland populations of New Zealand birds and that there are large gaps in knowledge of even common taxa. A brief cas e study demonstrates the inadequacies of using species lists that do not in clude Holocene fossil species. Species-area curves based on the total fauna differ substantially from those developed in previous studies based on inc omplete, or biased, lists. Pleistocene glaciations caused the pattern of distribution of species on th e main islands to change in concert with vegetation changes. Other possible effects include the elimination of warm climate species early in the cooli ng phase more than 1 million years ago, the speciation in groups including waders and parrots as new habitats (e.g., braided riverbeds and alpine area s) appeared, and the appearance regularly during the Pleistocene of islands that were potential staging points for colonisation of the Chatham Islands . For at least the past 100 000 years, until 2000 years ago, the fauna appe ars to have been very stable in composition, despite strong cyclic fluctuat ions in climate and vegetation. The effects of extinctions within the past 2000 years on the composition of the present fauna include the elimination of most of the endemic taxa from all but the subantarctic faunas. Only 169 species of the original late Holocene breeding fauna survive. The extinctio ns have resulted in a strong bias towards marine and coastal taxa in the pr esent avifauna, in contrast to the balanced representation of terrestrial a nd marine species in the Pleistocene and Holocene fauna. The importance of systematic studies and the determination of the status of island population s to conservation and basic ornithological research is emphasised. The syst ematic status of many New Zealand birds is poorly known at present.