Phylogenetic Distributions Of British Birds Of Conservation Concern

Main Category: Veterinary
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 15 Jun 2008 - 4:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

With wildlife populations reportedly plummeting, there is a pressing need to understand what makes some species more threatened than others.

Because close relatives of threatened species may share many of their characteristics, it is possible to use information on species' relationships to understand extinction risk.

I reconstruct the evolutionary tree of British birds and show that species with declining populations are more closely related to each other than expected.

However, because species that are at risk for other reasons, such as range contraction, are randomly distributed on the evolutionary tree, predicting future risk from evolutionary history alone may be unreliable.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

www.publishing.royalsociety.org/proceedingsb

• Additional
• References
• Citations