Return flight to the Canary Islands – The key role of peripheral populations of Afrocanarian blue tits (Aves: Cyanistes teneriffae) in multi-gene reconstructions of colonization pathways
Abstract Afrocanarian blue tits (Cyanistes teneriffae) have a scattered distribution on the Canary Islands and on the North African continent. To date, the Canary Islands have been considered the species’ main Pleistocene evolutionary center, but their colonization pathways remain uncertain. We set out to reconstruct a dated multi-gene phylogeny and ancestral ranges for Cyanistes tit species including the currently unstudied, peripheral Libyan population of C. t. cyrenaicae. In all reconstructions the most easterly and westerly peripheral populations (in Libya and on La Palma) represented basal offshoots of C. teneriffae. These two peripheral populations shared all four major indels and dif…
Correction: Phylogeny of the Eurasian Wren Nannus troglodytes (Aves: Passeriformes: Troglodytidae) reveals deep and complex diversification patterns of Ibero-Maghrebian and Cyrenaican populations
The Mediterranean Basin represents a Global Biodiversity Hotspot where many organisms show high inter- and intraspecific differentiation. Extant phylogeographic patterns of terrestrial circum-Mediterranean faunas were mainly shaped through Pleistocene range shifts and range fragmentations due to retreat into different glacial refugia. Thus, several extant Mediterranean bird species have diversified by surviving glaciations in different hospitable refugia and subsequently expanded their distribution ranges during the Holocene. Such a scenario was also suggested for the Eurasian Wren (Nannus troglodytes) despite the lack of genetic data for most Mediterranean subspecies. Our phylogenetic mult…
Limited potential for bird migration to disperse plants to cooler latitudes
Climate change is forcing the redistribution of life on Earth at an unprecedented velocity1,2. Migratory birds are thought to help plants to track climate change through long-distance seed dispersal3,4. However, seeds may be consistently dispersed towards cooler or warmer latitudes depending on whether the fruiting period of a plant species coincides with northward or southward migrations. Here we assess the potential of plant communities to keep pace with climate change through long-distance seed dispersal by migratory birds. To do so, we combine phenological and migration information with data on 949 seed-dispersal interactions between 46 bird and 81 plant species from 13 woodland communi…
A multi-gene approach reveals a complex evolutionary history in the Cyanistes species group
Quaternary climatic oscillations have been considered decisive in shaping much of the phylogeographic structure around the Mediterranean Basin. Within this paradigm, peripheral islands are usually considered as the endpoints of the colonization processes. Here, we use nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate the phylogeography of the blue tit complex (blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus, Canary blue tit C. teneriffae and azure tit C. cyanus), and assess the role of the Canary Islands for the geographic structuring of genetic variation. The Canary blue tit exhibits strong genetic differentiation within the Canary Islands and, in combination with other related continental species, provides a…