The mangrove rail (Rallus longirostris) is a species of bird in subfamily Rallinae of family Rallidae, the rails, gallinules, and coots. It is found in Central and South America. Taxonomy and systematics The mangrove rail was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen obtained in French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Rallus longirostris in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The genus Rallus had been erected in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The specific epithet longirostris combines the Latin longus meaning "long" and -rostris meaning "-billed". The mangrove rail was formerly considered to be conspecific with what are now the Aztec rail (R. tenuirostris), Ridgway's rail (R. obsoletus), the king rail (R. elegans), and the clapper rail (R. crepitans), and more recently as conspecific with Ridgeway's and king rails. Worldwide taxonomic systems now agree that each of the five is a separate species based on a 2013 study that described their different genetics and morphologies. Many systems treat it as most closely related to Ridgway's rail. Eight subspecies of mangrove rail are recognized: R. l. phelpsi Wetmore, 1941 R. l. dillonripleyi Phelps Jr. & Aveledo, 1987 R. l. margaritae Zimmer & Phelps, 1944 R. l. pelodramus Oberholser, 1937 R. l. longirostris Boddaert, 1783 R. l. crassirostris Lawrence, 1871 R. l. cypereti Taczanowski, 1878 R. l. berryorum J.M. Maley, J.E. McCormack, W.L.E. Tsai, E.M. Schwab, J. Van Dort, R.C. Roselvy, & M.D. Carling, 2016 Description The mangrove rail is about long and weighs . It has a long, slender, and slightly decurved bill with a brownish maxilla and an orange-yellow mandible. Its legs are light orange-red. The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies R. l. longirostris have dull gray-brown upperparts with darker centers to the feathers. They have a white loral streak on their pale gray face, a whitish throat, tawny buff neck and breast with a white center to the belly, and black and white bars on the flanks. Juveniles are