''Milvus'' is a
genus of medium-sized
birds of prey. The genus was erected by the French naturalist
Bernard Germain de Lacépède
Bernard-Germain-Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède or La Cépède (; 26 December 17566 October 1825) was a French naturalist and an active freemason. He is known for his contribution to the Comte de Buffon's great work, the ...
in 1799 with the
red kite as the
type species. The name is the
Latin word for the red kite.
Species
This is an
Old World
The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...
group that forms part of the subfamily
Milvinae. The genus contains three species.
Allozyme
Alloenzymes (or also called allozymes) are variant forms of an enzyme which differ structurally but not functionally from other allozymes coded for by different alleles at the same locus. These are opposed to isozymes, which are enzymes that perfo ...
data indicates that the genetic diversity in both black and red kites is rather low.
[Schreiber, Arnd; Stubbe, Michael & Stubbe, Annegret (2000): Red kite (''Milvus milvus'') and black kite (''M. migrans''): minute genetic interspecies distance of two raptors breeding in a mixed community (Falconiformes: Accipitridae). '' Biol. J. Linn. Soc.'' 69'(3): 351–365. (HTML abstract)
] Successful
hybridization
Hybridization (or hybridisation) may refer to:
*Hybridization (biology), the process of combining different varieties of organisms to create a hybrid
*Orbital hybridization, in chemistry, the mixing of atomic orbitals into new hybrid orbitals
*Nu ...
between ''Milvus'' kites is fairly commonplace, making
mtDNA analyses unreliable to resolve the genus'
phylogeny. Furthermore, there is no good
correlation
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
between molecular characters and
biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...
and
morphology in the
red kite due to very
incomplete lineage sorting.
The yellow-billed kite is apparently a separate species, as indicated by mtDNA phylogeny showing two supported clades,
[Johnson, Jeff A.; Rick T. Watson, and David P. Mindell (7 July 2005). Prioritizing species conservation: does the Cape Verde kite exist?. Proc Biol Sci. (The Royal Society) 272 (7): 1365–1371]
/ref> biogeography,monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
lineage according to mtDNA data,[ it is still best regarded as a distinct species. Whatever its status, this population is extinct.
A prehistoric kite from the ]Early Pleistocene
The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently estimated to span the time ...
(1.8 million–780,000 years ago) deposits at Ubeidiya Ubeidiya commonly refers to:
* Ubeidiya prehistoric site
* Ubeidiya, West Bank
* Ubeidiya, Tiberias
See also
* Abd (Arabic)
ʿAbd ( ar, عبد) is an Arabic word meaning one who is subordinated as a slave or a servant, and it means also to w ...
( Israel) was described as ''Milvus pygmaeus''.
References
*Crochet, Pierre-André (2005): Recent DNA studies of kites. '' Birding World'' 18(12): 486–488
HTML section list
Bird genera
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