New Zealand researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.

Bones found during research into New Zealand’s rare Hoiho or yellow-eyed penguin are thought to belong to the Waitaha which was hunted to extinction by the year 1500, about 250 years after the first humans arrived in New Zealand.

Researchers say it was the loss of the Waitaha that allowed the yellow-eyed penguin to thrive. Now it also faces extinction. Yellow eyed penguins are unique to New Zealand and are thought to be the world’s rarest penguins.

DNA testing
Philip Seddon of Otago University says the team testing DNA from the bones of prehistoric modern yellow-eyed penguins for genetic changes associated with human settlement, found some bones that were older - and had different DNA.

Seddon said dating techniques used on bones pulled from old Māori trash pits revealed a gap in time between the disappearance of the Waitaha and the arrival of the yellow-eyed penguin.

Competition
The gap seems to indicate that the extinction of the older bird created the opportunity for the newer to colonise New Zealand’s main islands, according to researchers. And they say that competition between the two penguin species may have previously prevented the yellow-eyed penguin from expanding north.

An estimated population of 7,000 yellow-eyed penguins are left in New Zealand and are the focus of an extensive conservation effort. In 1987 conservationists in Dunedin in the South Island formed the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust which works to restore coastal forest and control predators.

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