Settling down of seasonal migrants promotes bird diversification

Jonathan Rolland, Frédéric Jiguet, Knud Andreas Jønsson, Fabien L Condamine, Hélène Morlon

45 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

How seasonalmigration originated and impacteddiversification in birds remains largely unknown. Althoughmigratory behaviour is likely to affect bird diversification, previous studies have not detected any effect. Here, we infer ancestral migratory behaviour and the effect of seasonal migration on speciation and extinction dynamics using a complete bird tree of life. Our analyses infer that sedentary behaviour is ancestral, and thatmigratory behaviour evolved independently multiple times during the evolutionary history of birds. Speciation of a sedentary species into two sedentary daughter species ismore frequent than speciation of a migratory species into two migratory daughter species. However, migratory species often diversify by generating a sedentary daughter species in addition to the ancestral migratory one. This leads to an overall highermigratory speciation rate. Migratory species also experience lower extinction rates. Hence, although migratory species represent a minority (18.5%) of all extant birds, they have a higher net diversification rate than sedentary species. These results suggest that the evolution of seasonal migration in birds has facilitated diversification through the divergence of migratory subpopulations that become sedentary, and illustrate asymmetrical diversification as a mechanism by which diversification rates are decoupled from species richness.

Original languageEnglish
Article number20140473
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume281
ISSN0962-8452
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Apr 2014
Externally publishedYes

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