| Summary: | The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla, Linnaeus 1758) is a large raptor species, whose southernmost population is located in the Carpathian Basin. After a drastic decrease in the early 20th century, from the 1970's the European population have started to recover. In the 1970s, the total Hungarian breeding population was estimated 10-12 pairs, all inhabiting the South Transdanuibian region, with presumably no breeding birds in the Tiszántúl region. Nowadays, population census of the country is more than 220 breeding pairs, with abundant territories also nearby the Tisza river. Phylogeography throughout the distribution range of the species was studied using the mitochondrial DNA control region, revealing two distinct haplogroups with predominantly eastern or western distribution. According to this, the species is suggested to have survived the last glacial event in two main refugia, probably located in Central and Western Eurasia. This distribution pattern was later refined with involving samples from the breeding populations of Central Europe, describing several new haplotypes from this region. However, phylogography and populaton structure of the population inhabiting the Carpathian Basin was not studied until now. In this study, we attempted (1) to reveal phylogeographic relations of the white-tailed eagle population inhabiting the Carpathian Basin in relation to other populations in Europe, using a mtDNA control region fragment (16 samples), and (2) to highlight origin of the breeding population in the Tisza region. According to our two main hypothesis, eagles in this breeding area may originate (I) from wintering birds that arrivied from the Northern European populations and settled in the area, or (II) from dispersing birds of the breeding areas located in the southern part of the Carpathian Basin. To answer this question, we studied genetic structure and gene-flow between southwestern and Tisza region breeding areas using nine nuclear microsatellite loci, involving 104 nestling from different ...
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