Phylogenetic Distributions Of British Birds Of Conservation Concern

 15.06.2008 08:11   medicalnewstoday.com

With wildlife populations reportedly plummeting, there is a pressing need to understand what makes some species more threatened than others. Because close relatives of threatened species may share many of their characteristics, it is possible to use information on species' relationships to understand extinction risk. I reconstruct the evolutionary tree of British birds and show that species with declining populations are more closely related to each other than expected.

World Biology