A New Species of Pygmy-Owl (Strigidae: Glaucidium) from the Pacific Slope of the Northern Andes

Abstract

We describe a new species of pygmy-owl that is restricted to very wet cloud forest at 1,400 to 2,000 m in elevation along the Pacific slope of the western Andes of Colom- bia and Ecuador. This taxon had been long overlooked as a result of its morphological sim- ilarity and geographic proximity to the Andean Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium jardinii), but it is vocally very distinct and exhibits subtle but consistent morphological differences as well. Vocally, the new species is most similar to the Costa Rican-Panamanian form G. costaricanum and to the nominate subspecies of Northern Pygmy-Owl (G. gnoma), but again, consistent differences exist in vocalizations and morphology. Glaucidium costaricanum has long been considered a subspecies of G. jardinii, but at least one recent author treated it as a subspecies of G. gnoma. Genetic, vocal, ecological, and morphological data indicate that G. costaricanum should be elevated to species level, and it along with the new species are considered allospe- cies within the Northern Pygmy-Owl superspecies complex. Received 20 July 1998, accepted 2 December 1998.