Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Low mitochondrial DNA diversity in the endangered Bonelli’s Eagle (Hieraaetus fasciatus) from SW Europe (Iberia) and NW Africa

Journal of Ornithology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study is an initial survey of the genetic diversity and population structure of the endangered Bonelli’s Eagle (Hieraaetus fasciatus) in SW Europe (Iberia) and NW Africa, two locations where the species has undergone a severe decrease in numbers during the last decades. It is also the first study in which the mitochondrial control region (CR) has been used to study the genetic diversity and population structure of this species. Samples were obtained from 72 individuals from Spain, Portugal and Morocco, and a 253-bp fragment of the mitochondrial control region was amplified and sequenced. Only three polymorphisms were present, indicating low nucleotide and haplotype diversity. No evidence of genetic structure was found. Several hypotheses may explain these results, including a possible greater genetic diversity in other regions of the mitochondrial genome or the existence of a presumed ancient bottleneck (last glaciation), possibly followed by a human-induced more recent one (twentieth century).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Amos W, Balmford A (2001) When does conservation genetics matter? Heredity 87:257–265

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Arroyo B, Ferreiro E, Garza V (1992) Factores limitantes de la población de águila perdicera en España. Technical report ICONA (Ministerio de Medio Ambiente), Madrid

  • Avise JC (2000) Phylogeography: the history and formation of species. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baker AJ, Marshall HD (1997) Mitochondrial control region sequences as tools for understanding evolution. In: Mindell DP (ed) Avian molecular evolution and systematics. Academic Press, London, pp 51–82

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bensch S, Härlid A (2000) Mitochondrial genomic rearrangements in songbirds. Mol Biol Evol 17:107–113

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cadahía L, Urios V, Negro JJ (2005) Survival and movements of satellite tracked Bonelli’s eagles during their first winter. Ibis 147:415–419

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cardia P, Fraguas B, Pais M, Guillemaud T, Palma L, Cancela ML, Ferrand N, Wink M (2000) Preliminary genetic analysis of some western Palaearctic populations of Bonelli’s eagle, Hieraaetus fasciatus. In: Chancellor RD, Meyburg B-U (eds) Raptors at risk. WWGBP/Hancock House, London

  • Cardia P, Fraguas B, Pais M, Silva S, Guillemaud T, Palma L, Cancela ML, Ferrand N (2002) Análise da variação genética de proteínas em populações mediterrânicas de águia-perdigueira Hieraaetus fasciatus. Airo 12:71–74

    Google Scholar 

  • Clamp M, Cuff J, Searle SM, Barton GJ (2004) The Jalview Java alignment editor. Bioinformatics 20:426–427

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Clayton DA (1992) Transcription and replication of animal mitochondrial DNAs. In: Wolstenholme DR, Jeon KW (eds) Mitochondrial genomes International review of cytology, vol 141. Academic Press, San Diego, pp 217–232

    Google Scholar 

  • Cramp S, Simmons KEL (1980) Handbook of the birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, vol 2. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Eberhard JR, Wright TF, Bermingham E (2001) Duplication and concerted evolution of the mitochondrial control region in the parrot genus Amazona. Mol Biol Evol 18:1330–1342

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Excoffier L, Smouse PE, Quattro JM (1992) Analysis of molecular variance inferred from metric distances among DNA haplotypes: application to human mitochondrial DNA restriction data. Genetics 131:479–491

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Felsenstein J (2004) PHYLIP (Phylogeny Inference Package), version 3.6. Distributed by the author. Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle

  • Frankham R, Ballou BD, Briscoe DA (2002) Introduction to conservation genetics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gemmell N, Akiyama S (1996) An efficient method for the extraction of DNA from vertebrate tissue. Trends Genet 12:338–339

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Godoy JA, Negro JJ, Hiraldo F, Donázar JA (2004) Phylogeography, genetic structure and diversity in the endangered bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus L.) as revealed by mitochondrial DNA. Mol Ecol 13:371–390

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Graur D, Li W-H (2000) Fundamentals of molecular evolution, 2nd edn. Sinauer Assoc, Sunderland

    Google Scholar 

  • Haring E, Riesing MJ, Pinkser W, Gamauf A (1999) Evolution of a pseudo-control region in the mitochondrial genome of Palearctic buzzards (genus Buteo). J Zool Syst Evol Res 37:185–194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kruckenhauser L, Haring E, Pinsker W, Riesing MJ, Winkler H, Wink M, Gamauf A (2004) Genetic vs. morphological differentiation of Old World buzzards (genus Buteo, Accipitridae). Zool Scripta 33:197–211

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kumar S, Tamura K, Jakobsen IB, Nei M (2001) MEGA2: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis software. Bioinformatics 17:1244–1245

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • L’Abbé D, Duhaime JF, Lang BF, Morais R (1991) The transcription of DNA in chicken mitochondria initiates from one major bidirectional promoter. J Biol Chem 266:10844–10850

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martínez-Cruz B, Godoy JA, Negro JJ (2004) Population genetics after fragmentation: the case of the endangered Spanish imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti). Mol Ecol 13:2243–2255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nei M, Li W (1979) Mathematical model for studying genetic variation in terms of restriction endonucleases. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 76:5269–5273

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Palma L, Pais MC, Fráguas B (1996) Status and distribution of Bonelli’s eagle, Hieraaetus fasciatus, in Portugal. In: II Int Conf Raptors. Urbino, Italy

  • Real J, Mañosa S (2001) Dispersal of juvenile and immature Bonelli’s eagles in Northeastern Spain. J Raptor Res 35:9–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Real J, Grande JM, Mañosa S, Sánchez-Zapata JA (2001) Geographic variation of the causes of death of Bonelli’s eagle Hieraaetus fasciatus in Spain. Bird Study 48:221–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riesing MJ, Kruckenhauser L, Gamauf A, Haring E (2003) Molecular phylogeny of the genus Buteo based on mitochondrial maker sequences. Mol Phyl Evol 27:328–342

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rocamora G (1994) Bonelli’s eagle Hieraaetus fasciatus. In: Tucker GM, Heath MF (eds) Birds in Europe: their conservation status. Birdlife International, Cambridge, pp 184–185

    Google Scholar 

  • Roques S, Negro JJ (2005) MtDNA genetic diversity and population history of a dwindling raptorial bird, the red kite (Milvus milvus). Biol Conserv 126:41–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozas J, Rozas R (1999) DnaSP version 3: an integrated program for molecular population genetics and molecular evolution analysis. Bioinformatics 15:174–175

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ruokonen M, Kvist L (2002) Structure and evolution of the avian mitochondrial control region. Mol Phylogenet Evol 23:422–432

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider S, Roessli D, Excoffier L (2000) Arlequin ver. 2.000: software for population genetics data analysis. Genetics and Biometry Laboratory, University of Geneva, Switzerland

  • Seutin G, White BN, Boag PT (1991) Preservation of avian blood and tissue samples for DNA analyses. Can J Zool 69:82–90

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tamura K, Nei M (1993) Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees. Mol Biol Evol 10:512–526

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson JD, Higgins DG, Gibson TJ (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Res 22:4673–4680

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Väli Ü (2002) Mitochondrial pseudo-control region in old world eagles (genus Aquila). Mol Ecol 11:2189–2194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wink M (2000) Advances in DNA studies of diurnal and nocturnal raptors. In: Chancellor RD, Meyburg B-U (eds) Raptors at risk. WWGBP, Hancock House

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright S (1965) The interpretation of population structure by F-statistics with special regard to systems of mating. Evolution 19:395–420

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to all of the people and organizations that provided samples for the present study: J. Balbontín (Estación Biológica de Doñana), S. Mira (University of Algarve), C. Gerique (C.R.F. El Saler), A. García (GREFA), I. Molina (EGMASA), M.R. Jané (ICRA) and A. Gardiazábal. We are also grateful to the Governments of the Comunidad Valenciana, Catalunya and Región de Murcia, the Universities of Barcelona and Miguel Hernández and the Spanish Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (especially V. García Matarranz) for giving permission to have access to nests and for invaluable field assistance. We appreciatively acknowledge J. Muñoz for his help in the laboratory as well as all of the other people working in the Laboratory of Molecular Ecology of the Estación Biológica de Doñana. We are grateful to S. Roques for her help with the software. E. Haring, A. Juan, R. Limiñana, E. Micó, A. Soutullo and two anonymous referees provided critical reading and very valuable comments on early versions of the manuscript. This project was funded by the Terra Natura Foundation. L. Cadahía is supported by a grant of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (reference AP2001-1444). This paper is part of L. Cadahía’s PhD thesis at the University of Alicante.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luis Cadahía.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Wink.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cadahía, L., Negro, J.J. & Urios, V. Low mitochondrial DNA diversity in the endangered Bonelli’s Eagle (Hieraaetus fasciatus) from SW Europe (Iberia) and NW Africa. J Ornithol 148, 99–104 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-006-0107-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-006-0107-z

Keywords

Navigation