BEARDED VULTURE POPULATION AND HABITAT VIABILITY ...

Population and Habitat Viability Assessment: Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus)
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Ravens and Cape Griffon Vultures (Brown 1997b) as they take mainly red meat, organs and
entrails. They avoid direct competition with vultures (Gyps species) when feeding nestlings by
flying much earlier in the morning. Foraging range during the breeding season varies between
300-750 km 2 though the home range during a year could be between 4 000 and 7 500 km 2
(Brown 1997b; Mundy et al. 1992: 209-210).
7. Genetics in southern Africa
Currently there is no information on the genetic structure of the southern African deme. (A
deme is a spatially discrete, interbreeding group of organisms all of the same species.)
However, this deme is likely to be genetically uniform because it is small, less than 600
individuals all within an area, which is small relative to their likely foraging range. The nature of
the relationship between the southern African deme and the populations in East Africa is not
known. Furthermore, the genetic relationship between the two sub-species is also not known.
In a recent abstract (in Frey et al. 2004: 117) the results of a genetic analysis of the
mitochondria of the Bearded Vulture were summarised as follows:
Bearded Vulture populations in the Western Palearctic have experienced a severe
decline during the last two centuries that has led to the near extinction of the
species in Europe. In this paper we analyze the sequence variation at the
mitochondrial control region throughout the species range to infer its recent
evolutionary and to evaluate the current genetic status of the species. This study
became possible through the extensive use of museum specimens to study
populations now extinct. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the existence of two
divergent mitochondrial lineages, lineage A occurring mainly in Western European
populations and lineage B in African, Eastern European and Central Asian
populations. The relative frequencies of haplotypes belonging to each lineage in the
different populations show a steep East-West clinal distribution with maximal
mixture of the two lineages in the Alps and Greece populations. A genealogical
signature for population growth found for lineage B but not for lineage A and the
Clade B haplotypes in Western populations and clade A haplotypes in eastern
populations are recently derived, as revealed by their peripheral location in medianjoining
haplotype networks. This phylogeographic pattern suggests allopatric
differentiation of the two lineages in separate Mediterranean and African or Asian
glacial refugia, followed by range expansion from the latter leading to two secondary
contact suture zones in Central Europe and North Africa. High levels of among
population differentiation were observed, although these were not correlated with
geographical distance. Due to the marked genetic structure, extinction of Central
European populations in the last century resulted in the loss of a major portion of
the genetic diversity for the species. We also found direct evidence for the effect of
drift altering the genetic composition of the remnant Pyrenean population after the
demographic bottleneck of the last century. Our results argue for the management
of the species as a single population, given the apparent ecological exchangeability
of extant stocks, and support the ongoing reintroduction of mix ancestry birds in the
Alps and planned reintroductions in Southern Spain. (José A. Godoy, Juan J.
Negro, Fernando Hiraldo, José A. Donázar)
From this it is clear that nothing is clear.
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