Abstract
Populations of Oriental White-backed Vulture (Gyps bengalensis) and Long-billed Vulture (Gyps indicus) dramatically declined by 95–100% on the Indian subcontinent in mid-1990s. The present study was conducted to discover the phylogeny and phylogeography of Gyps species based on nuclear (recombination activating gene, RAG-1) and mitochondrial (cytochrome b, cytb) markers. Gyps species showed monophyly and no geographic partition was observed within the three groups of Gyps species (G. bengalensis, G. indicus and G. fulvus) despite the large sample size available (n = 149). Our study supports the treatment of G. indicus and G. tenuirostris as separate species. In all analyses, the earliest divergence separated G. bengalensis from all other Gyps taxa while a sister relationship was supported between G. fulvus and G. rueppellii, and these two taxa together were sister group to a clade consisting of G. indicus, G. tenuirostris and G. coprotheres. Molecular clock estimates of both nuclear and mitochondrial (RAG-1, cytb) genes indicated a rapid and recent diversification within the Gyps species.
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Acknowledgments
This Project was supported by a fellowship of the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst to M.A. We are very grateful to many people who helped us with the field work, especially the Ministry of Environment and Tourism Namibia for permission to collect and export the samples. We thank Hedi Sauer-Gürth for her help in the laboratory as well as Theodor C. H. Cole for improving this manuscript. We thank Prof. Dr. H. Bock (Managing Director of IWR) and S. Friedel for access to parallel computing facilities at the interdisciplinary center for Scientific Computing (IWR, Heidelberg University). Finally, we greatly appreciate the constructive comments of anonymous referee to improve the final manuscript.
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Communicated by J. Fjeldså.
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10336_2008_359_MOESM1_ESM.xls
Origin, collection codes and accession numbers of taxa sequenced in this study. Haplotype names correspond to those in Fig. 4 (XLS 44 kb)
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Arshad, M., Gonzalez, J., El-Sayed, A.A. et al. Phylogeny and phylogeography of critically endangered Gyps species based on nuclear and mitochondrial markers. J Ornithol 150, 419–430 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-008-0359-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-008-0359-x