The azure dollarbird (''Eurystomus azureus'') also known as the azure roller, purple dollarbird or purple roller, is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the family

Coraciidae Coraciidae is a family of Old World birds, which is known as rollers because of the aerial acrobatics some of these birds perform during courtship or territorial flights. Rollers resemble crows in size and build, and share the colourful appearan ...

. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

to the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

in Indonesia. Formerly, some authorities considered the azure dollarbird to be a subspecies of the oriental dollarbird. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study by Ulf Johansson and collaborators published in 2018 found that the azure dollarbird was nested in a clade containing subspecies of the Oriental dollarbird (''Eurystomus orientalis'').

Habitat

The azure dollarbird's natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are

subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, disco ...

and

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Th ...

s. It is negatively affected by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

. For some time, it was assumed to be decreasing in numbers quite rapidly and it was uplisted to Vulnerable in the 2000

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

. However, more recently it was determined to be—although still declining—more common than previously believed and thus it has now been downlisted to Near Threatened in 2007.See BirdLife International (2004, 2007a,b).

Footnotes

References

* BirdLife International (2007a):
2006-2007 Red List status changes
]. Retrieved 2007-AUG-26. * BirdLife International (2007b)
Eurystomus azureus - BirdLife Species Factsheet
Retrieved 2007-AUG-26 Eurystomus, azure dollarbird Birds of the Maluku Islands azure dollarbird azure dollarbird Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Coraciiformes-stub