BORNEO - The Cream-vented Bulbul or Pycnonotus simplex, is a common drab brown bird that inhabits the island of Borneo. Aside from Borneo, the bird can also be found in Thailand to Sumatra, and Java. In most sightings, the birds were observed to have white eyes. However, recent observations have noted that most of the said birds in Borneo have red eyes and only a few were found to have white eyes.
For over a century, the common knowledge was that the difference on eye color among the Bulbuls were only trivial and does not hold much importance until researchers from Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science have analyzed their recently collected data.
Their efforts in analyzing and their skillful use of genetic sequencing technology, the researchers have discovered that the white-eyed Bulbuls are actually a different species.
The scientific journal, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, has published the researcher's discovery of the Cream-eyed Bulbul or Pycnonotus pseudosimplex.
The study's lead author and LSU Department of Biological Sciences Ph.D., Subir Shakya, has explained that the red-eyed birds and the white-eyed birds are of different species and not just two different variants of one species. He further explained that the two populations are not interbreeding even if they inhabit only one area, which is a definitive sign that the two each belong to separate species.
The discovery of the new species was made after Shakya has returned from his expedition to Sumatra and he started sequencing the DNA of the bird specimens. His goal was to determine the degree of genetic relatedness of various species of birds from different islands and Asia's mainland.
In his analysis, he has observed that the genetic make-up of the white-eyed Cream-vented Bulbuls from Borneo is different from the red-eyed and white-eyed Cream-vented Bulbuls from other areas. The discrepancy prompted Shakya to do more work and research. Later, later concluded that the white-eyed birds from Borneo are actually a different and new species.
The Cream-eyed Bulbuls have been sighted in different parts of Malaysian Borneo such as the old-growth hill forest in Range National Park, Lambir Hills National Park, and Batang Ai National Park according to the study's co-author and Shakya's Ph.D. advisor, Fred Sheldon.
All the newly collected specimens used for the research are housed together with the other collection of specimens being preserved at the LSU Museum of Natural Science. The museum currently holds the world's largest trove of genetic samples of birds that are collected from Sumatra, Borneo, the Smithsonian, and the University of Kansas Musem.
