RT Journal Article
T1 Generation of raptor diversity in Europe: linking speciation with climate changes and the ability to migrate
A1 Negro, Juan José
A1 Rodríguez Rodríguez, Eduardo José
A1 Rodríguez, Airam
A1 Bildstein, Keith
AB Europe holds a rich community of diurnal birds of prey, and the highest proportionof transcontinental migratory raptorial species of any landmass. This study will testthe hypotheses that the high diversification of the raptor assemblage in Europe is arecent event, that closely related species sharing the same trophic niches can onlycoexist in sympatry during the breeding period, when food availability is higher, andfinally that migration is a function of size, with the smaller species in every trophicgroup moving further. A consensus molecular phylogeny for the 38 regular breedingspecies of raptors in Europe was obtained from BirdTree (www.birdtree.org). For thesame species, a trophic niche cluster dendrogram was constructed. Size andmigratory strategy were introduced in the resulting phylogeny, where trophic groupswere also identified. Multispecific trophic groups tended to be composed ofreciprocal sister species of different sizes, while monospecific groups (n = 3) werecomposed of highly specialized species. Many speciation events took place recently,during the glacial cycles of the Quaternary, and size divergence among competingspecies may be due to character displacement. Nowadays, the smaller species in everytrophic group migrate to sub-Saharan Africa. This investigation illustrates how therich assemblage of diurnal birds of prey in Europe, more diverse and more migratorythan, for instance, the North American assemblage at equivalent latitudes, hasemerged recently due to the multiplication of look-alike species with similar trophicecologies, possibly in climate refugia during cold periods.
PB PeerJ
SN 2167-8359 (electrónico)
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22172
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22172
LA eng
NO Negro, J. J., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, E. J., Rodríguez, A., & Bildstein, K. (2022). Generation of raptor diversity in Europe: linking speciation with climate changes and the ability to migrate. In PeerJ (Vol. 10, p. e14505). PeerJ. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14505
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 15 jun 2026