The Daito Winter Wren is a controversial subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 of the Winter Wren

Winter Wren

The Winter Wren is a very small North American bird and a member of the mainly New World wren family Troglodytidae. It was once lumped with Troglodytes pacificus of western North America and Troglodytes troglodytes of Eurasia under the name Winter Wren.It breeds in coniferous forests from British...

. It is known only by the type

Biological type

In biology, a type is one particular specimen of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached...

 specimen, a male collected in 1938 on Minami Daitō-jima, the main island of the Daito Archipelago

Daito Islands

Daitō Islands are three islands that lie about east of Okinawa. From north to south, the islands are:* Data from 2004 Nov 20, 08:55 version of Japanese Wikipedia...

 east of Okinawa. Yamashina described the bird as a new subspecies after comparing it with 114 specimens from surrounding areas and under the impression that the Winter Wren is a fairly sedentary bird, not liable to be drifted astray over long distances. Its scientific name honors Yamashina's specimen collector, Hyojiri Orii.

However, stray winter wrens have more recently found on Yonaguni

Yonaguni

is one of the Yaeyama Islands. It is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan and lies from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper....

 and Okinawa Island

Okinawa Island

Okinawa Island is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, and is home to Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture. The island has an area of...

s. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the Daito bird was just a straggler from the Honshū

Honshu

is the largest island of Japan. The nation's main island, it is south of Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyushu across the Kanmon Strait...

 (T. t. fumigatus), the Yakushima

Yakushima

, one of the Ōsumi Islands, is an island of about 500 km² and roughly 15,000 islanders to the south of Kyūshū in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The Vincennes Strait separates it from Tanegashima. The highest point on the island is Miyanoura-dake at 1,935 metres...

/Tanegashima

Tanegashima

is an island lying to the south of Kyushu, in southern Japan, and is part of Kagoshima Prefecture. The island is the second largest of the Ōsumi Islands....

 (T. t. ogawae) or the Izu Islands

Izu Islands

The are a group of volcanic islands stretching south and east from the Izu Peninsula of Honshū, Japan. Administratively, they form two towns and six villages; all part of Tokyo. The largest is Izu Ōshima, usually called simply Ōshima....

 (T. t. mosukei) population (Vaurie, 1955). As the specimen exists (Yamashina Institute for Ornithology collection No. 25476), it should be possible to resolve its status by DNA

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

analysis. Certainly, many bird populations on islands south of Japan became extinct in the late 1930s as settlement and civilian and military construction destroyed large amounts of habitat.