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E-book Bird Species : How They Arise, Modify and Vanish

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Penilaian

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Birds are of high public interest and of great value as indicators of thestate of the environment. Some 11,000 species are a number relatively well tohandle. From a scientific point of view, it is not easily answerable what a speciesis, since speciation and extinction are ongoing evolutionary processes and differen-tiation among species works on various traits. Contemporary systematics attempts totake into account as many criteria as possible to delimit species. The currently mostinfluential approach is the use of genomic sequences, be it as a neutral marker or todiscover the underpinnings of functional traits. The study of the outer appearance ofbirds nevertheless remains fundamental, since that is the interface between a bird andits biotic and abiotic environment. For the majority of bird species, acquired traits ofvocal communication add to this complex. Birds can also vary the timing ofimportant behavior such as breeding or molting. Most fascinating among circannualbehavior are the long-distance movements that can quite fast evolve and havegenetic bases. Despite such dispersal ability for many bird species, geographicbarriers play a large role for distribution and speciation in birds. Extant, former,and potential future ranges of a species can be modeled based on the abiotic nichesindividuals of this species have. Within a species’range, genetic and phenotypictraits vary and promote to process toward species splits. Beside geographic frame-works, ecological circumstances play a major role and contribute to natural selectionbut also trigger individual responses such as phenotypic plasticity, modification ofthe environment, and habitat selection. Anthropogenic global impacts such asclimate and land-use changes (e.g., urbanization) force extant species to acceleratedmodifications or population splits or let them vanish forever. Only if humans leavemore room and time to birds and other organisms can we expect to maintain such anumber of diverse bird species, although they will keep modifying, splitting, andbecoming extinct—but for natural reasons. For many people around the world, birds are among the most fascinating fellowanimals on Earth. Ornithology, the scientific study on birds, is one of the oldestorganized scientific disciplines (Birkhead et al.2014). And birds are among the beststudied organisms (del Hoyo et al.1992–2013). So why are we presenting yetanother book on birds and especially bird speciation?What we nowadays recognize as a bird is the relatively small-sized featheredsurvivor of the dinosaur assemblage of reptiles. These warm-blooded vertebratesdiversified into tens of thousands of species within the last 150 and especially65 million years. And while this diversification process keeps going, species havebecome extinct—for natural and increasingly for non-natural reasons. While thereare many ways how we humans are letting the numbers of bird individuals andspecies diminish, there is also a lot we could and should do to halt this trend andpreserve avian diversity.To that end—and for many scientific reasons—it is important to understand whata bird species is and how it arises, is modified, and vanishes. It is far less easy than itappears to circumscribe a bird species. This is mainly due to the transient nature ofspecies. Being one descendant of another species, a species can slowly becomeanother species (anagenesis), die out, or split into two or more daughter species(cladogenesis).In the 2000s, Newton (2003) and Price (2008) summarized the state of knowledgeon this last aspect, which is so fundamentally important for the generation of birddiversity or biodiversity in general. A lot of advancement has been achieved sincethen, be it in thefield of genomic foundations of species, bird distributions and theirmodeling, or (macro)ecological insights. And on the downside, human impactthrough land-use and climate changes has challenged more and more bird speciesand also reduces the population sizes of hitherto abundant species.That is why publisher and editor both wished to compile an update on the topic ofbird speciation but also to widen the audience from specialists to general birdenthusiasts and conservationists. A variety of experts—from PhD students to seniorresearchers—elaborate on various aspects in the following chapters.George Sangster starts with the timely approach on how to circumscribe or evendefine a bird species (Chap.2). Instead of using afixed degree of differentiation in acertain genetic marker or some other scoring, he favors an integrative synopsis of asmany lines of evidence available for the birds in question such as morphology,genetics, distribution, and behavior. This does not make things easier but proved tobe most adequate.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

598 TIE b

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2018

Deskripsi Fisik

270 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783319916897

Klasifikasi

598

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Aves

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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