Cape Verde kites, considered by some to be the rarest raptors in the world, live on the Cape Verde Islands, about 300 miles west of the African country of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean.
"The historical Cape Verde birds (1897 to 1924) were in the red kite group," said David Mindell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology. Red kites are common in Europe.
The five modern Cape Verde kites they tested belonged to an entirely different branch of the kite family: they are black kites which are common in northern Africa, the Middle East and Australia.
"The Cape Verde kites don't hold together as an evolutionary unit," observed Mindell. "That's what the data suggest."
It's not clear how the ornithological switcheroo happened, said Mindell, since the birds aren't talking.
One possible explanation is that all Cape Verde kites blew over from Africa and Europe, he said. Under this scenario, none of the historical kites stuck around; or they were isolated from other kites long enough to evolve into a new species — at least according to the mitochondrial DNA.
The results of the study by Mindell, and the Peregrine Fund's Jeff Johnson and Richard Watson, appear in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
