'What was once considered to be an extinct species, the Tasman booby, turns out be a subspecies of a living species, the masked booby (Sula dactylatra fullagari). And now these charismatic sea birds have a new name - Sula dactylatra tasmani.'

Masked boobies are large colonial sea birds that breed on oceanic islands throughout the tropics and subtropics. In addition to having longer wings than birds elsewhere, the masked boobies breeding on three remote island groups in the North Tasman Sea have sepia, not yellow, eyes.

Future research will explore how these long-winged, sepia-eyed birds came to be so different from their short-winged, yellow-eyed counterparts.

These findings have been recently published online in Biology Letters.