Martim Melo + Owl
To Melo, one of the most fascinating things about the bird is how long it was able to hide from researchers. His and his colleagues’ genetic analysis uncovered that, of all the scops owl species living on nearby islands, the Príncipe scops owl was the earliest to diverge. Birds from the mainland arrived on Príncipe first.
Yet, somehow, the owl there was the last to be formally acknowledged by biology. “I had a first-hand experience of its elusiveness,” said Melo. “From my first suspicions of its existence in 1998, it took me 20 years to first set eyes on it!”
