Echo Parakeet

The echo parakeet (Psittacula eques) is a species of parrot endemic to the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and formerly Réunion. It is the only living native parrot of the Mascarene Islands; all others have become extinct due to human activity. Two subspecies have been recognised, the extinct Réunion parakeet (for a long time known only from descriptions and illustrations) and the living echo parakeet, sometimes known as the Mauritius parakeet. The relationship between the two populations has been historically disputed. A 2015 DNA study compared the DNA of echo parakeets with a skin sample thought to be from a Réunion parakeet and determined them to be subspecies of the same species. However, it has also been suggested they did not constitute different subspecies. As it was named first, the binomial name of the Réunion parakeet is used for the species; the Réunion subspecies thereby became P. eques eques, while the Mauritius subspecies became P. eques echo. Their closest relative was the extinct Newton's parakeet of Rodrigues, and the three are grouped among the subspecies of the rose-ringed parakeet (from which they diverged) of Asia and Africa.

Abridged excerpt from the Wikipedia article Echo parakeet, by its authors, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.