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New perspectives on the origin and diversification of Africa’s forest avifauna
Author(s) -
Fjeldså Jon,
Bowie Rauri C. K.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
african journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.499
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1365-2028
pISSN - 0141-6707
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2008.00992.x
Subject(s) - endemism , geography , diversification (marketing strategy) , tanzania , taxon , ecology , cape , clade , biology , phylogenetics , archaeology , business , biochemistry , environmental planning , marketing , gene
The use of DNA sequence data in systematic studies has brought about a revolution in our understanding of avian relationships and when combined with digitized distributional data, has facilitated new interpretations about the origins of diverse clades of the African avifauna including its diversification up through the Tertiary until the present. Here we review recent studies with special reference to Africa’s forest avifauna and specifically comment on the putative origins of ‘hotspots’ of endemism in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and in the Cape Region of South Africa. Intriguingly, both these areas appear to have retained populations of relict taxa since the mid‐tertiary thermal optimum and at the same time have been centres of recent species differentiation.