Evolutionary consequences of alternative migratory routes in birds

CALDERÓN LUCIANO; PETRA QUILLFEDLT; TOM WILKE

Giessen

Workshop; International Coral Genome Workshop: From Whole Genome Data to RADseq and Beyond; 2014

Justus Liebig University

Bird?s migration have fascinated biologist for centuries. The fact that birds can go through several and drastic phenotypic changes, involving morphological, physiological and behavioral modifications, before performing trips of thousands of kilometers is striking. During the last decades there has been strong advance in the knowledge of mechanisms underlying bird?s migration. For example it has been shown that the ability to migrate has a strong genetic component, and it has also been proposed that all birds have evolved genes enabling them to migrate, weather they actually migrate or not seems to depend on environmental pressures. With the advance of molecular approaches in the study of natural populations, it has been observed that closely related species, even sister species, may have very contrasting migratory strategies (e.g. fully migratory and fully sedentary). It seems straight forward that going from fully migratory to fully sedentary could have an important impact in evolutionary history of a species, moreover migratory behavior has been observed as one of the ecological forces responsible for triggering the speciation process. However, less are the studies that have tried to elucidate what are the evolutionary consequences, at the intraspecific level, of subtler differences in the migratory behavior, such as the existence of alternative migratory routes within a species. The usage of modern molecular tools analyzed through a phylogeographic and population genetics framework could be very helpful providing new insights into this issue.