Endangered
Abbott's Booby
Papasula abbotti
Abbott's booby is an endangered seabird of the sulid family, that includes gannets and boobies.
Appearance
Individuals can reach 80 cm (31 in) from beak to tail, and weigh about 1.5 kg (3.3 lb). It is distinguished from other sulids in the region by its black and white plumage. The only other bird with similar coloration and shape is the masked booby, that has an all-white body with black wings only. Males have pale grey bills with a black tip, whereas females have pink bills with a black tip.
Published measurements include mass about 112.17.
Range and habitat
Abbott's booby is the only booby restricted to a single location, although its former distribution covered much of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Fossil evidence indicates its former presence in the South Pacific, and eyewitness reports of it formerly breeding on the Mascarene Islands. In April 2007, an individual of this species was photographed at a booby colony on Rota in the Pacific Ocean, and the same individual has been seen off-and-on in the red-footed booby colony there through at least 2024.
It was first identified from a specimen collected by William Louis Abbott, who discovered it on Assumption Island in 1892. Abbott's booby breeds only in a few spots on the Australian territory of Christmas Island in the eastern Indian Ocean, although it formerly had a much wider range.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Individuals are solitary, long-distance travellers that can range thousands of kilometres from Christmas Island. So, they nest near the tops of trees.
If an individual falls to the forest floor, it will starve unless it can climb high enough to be able to catch the wind and take off. Adults forage at sea from October to April, although they return if they have a chick that is dependent on them.
In crisis
Minimal habitat declines have a significant effect on the bird population. It brought the estimate of breeding pairs up to 2,500, with the total number of mature individuals being placed at 6,000. The population size is estimated to decrease more than 80% over the next three generations, or 120 years.
The current decline is attributed to a low recruitment rate and the negative effects of wind turbulence on a breeding population. Due to its small population, limited habitat, low fecundity, and limited distribution, Abbott's booby is at high risk of extinction if further habitat disturbance occurs.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Abbott's Booby is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Abbott's Booby, Wikidata item Q839854. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
