The Karimui owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles terborghi) is a species of bird in the owlet-nightjar family Aegothelidae. It is found in montane eastern New Guinea.
It was formally described in 1967 by the American scientist Jared Diamond based on a single specimen that had been collected in the Karimui basin of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. He classified the specimen as a subspecies of the barred owlet-nightjar and coined the trinomial nameAegotheles bennettii terborghi. The specific epithet was chosen to honour the co-discoverer of the bird, the American ecologist John Terborgh.[1]
An mRNA analysis of the owlet-nightjars published in 2003 found that the Karimui owlet-nightjar was more closely related to the Vogelkop owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles affinis) than it was to the barred owlet-nightjar.[2] It was only known from the type specimen until it was rediscovered in 2016.[3] It is now treated as a distinct species.[4]
^Dumbacher, J.P.; Pratt, T.K.; Fleischer, R.C. (2003). "Phylogeny of the owlet-nightjars (Aves: Aegothelidae) based on mitochondrial DNA sequence". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 29 (3): 540–549. doi:10.1016/S1055-7903(03)00135-0.
