Distribution and conservation status of Cyrenaica Partridge Alectoris [barbara] barbata

The subspecies of Barbary Partridge Alectoris barbara confined to northeast Libya and adjacent Egypt, A. b. barbata, has recently been posited to merit species rank, with the additional suggestion that it might be among the Western Palearctic's most threatened avian taxa. As a first step to assessing its conservation status, we review the distribution and habitat of A. b. barbata by collating all records and information available to us, including published literature, unpublished observations and museum holdings, adding evidence to the taxonomic issue by measuring 12 previously uninspected specimens. We identify and map 53 localities, with most (and all recent) records coming from the Jebel Akhdar massif, an area of relatively lush uplands in north-west Cyrenaica, Libya. We trace no certain record from Egypt since 1964. Hunting is blamed for widespread declines in populations but habitat degradation away from the Jebel Akhdar may have caused a considerable range contraction. A systematic survey of the Jebel Akhdar is needed to determine the species' conservation status. We agree that Cyrenaica Partridge A. barbata is a species, and add new data on its bolder flank stripes and longer tail.

The Barbary Partridge Alectoris barbara is principally a North African species (with some evidently introduced insular European populations) comprising four subspecies, the easternmost of which, barbata, ranging through north-eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) into western Egypt, has intermittently been recognised as a strongly distinctive form, and recently as a species. Its taxonomic history has involved a surprising degree of divergence in opinion and indeed insight. In his original description, Reichenow (1896) considered it ‘a noteworthy partridge’, yet Salvadori & Festa (1916)—also describing it as a new species, unaware of Reichenow’s account—diagnosed it on just a single character. Hartert (1921–22) thought it ‘notably distinct’ and ‘the most strikingly different of the birds peculiar to Cyrenaica’ (Hartert 1923); but he still placed it as a subspecies of A. barbara. Ghigi (1921, 1923) demurred, citing multiple points of divergence in plumage. Peters (1934) ignored this and followed Hartert’s trinomial arrangement. Although Stanford (1954) expressly went to Cyrenaica to collect specimens of barbata, he remained curiously silent on its taxonomic status. In this he was followed by Vaurie (1965), Cramp & Simmons (1980), Crowe et al. (1986), McGowan (1994), Beaman & Madge (1998) and Madge et al. (2002). Most unfortunately, particularly for a work scrutinising the world’s avifauna for taxa unjustly lumped as subspecies, del Hoyo & Collar (2014) described variation in A. barbara as ‘largely clinal’, with an illustration of A. b. spatzi that erroneously depicted it as intermediate in plumage (as it is in geography) between A. b. barbara and A. b. barbata.

The credit for reassessing the taxonomic status of A. b. barbata belongs to Spanò et al. (2013) and Ebels & Essaker (2022). The former itemised the plumage differences, made the first measurements (from 24 specimens) and sampled mtDNA from four barbata specimens (and two specimens of barbara/spatzi) in Turin, finding that the tail of barbata is longer than in A. b. barbara, and the genetic distance between them is 6%. Ebels & Essaker (2022) established seven points of morphological divergence between barbara and barbata and, via G. Sangster, compared the control region sequences (242 bp) of four barbata, six barbara, and 237 other Alectoris specimens covering all species in the genus. They reported a mean genetic divergence of 4.3% (3.9–4.8%) between barbata and barbara, considerably greater than the mean intraspecific variation found in all other Alectoris species. On the basis of this accumulated evidence, recognition of barbata as a species is at hand and, given that Ebels & Essaker (2022) expressed serious concern about its welfare, a review of the conservation status of the form has a new urgency. We therefore here attempt to assemble as much relevant information as possible preliminary to any formal status review. In so doing, we take the opportunity to supply a few further data in support of the taxonomic distinctiveness of the form.