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Simple Summary: Falcons are keystone species that maintain ecosystem structures, functions, and services. With the help of phylogenetic comparative methods, climatic data, and species distribution modeling, we investigated how European falcon climatic niches have changed over evolutionary time. Convergent evolution and niche divergence have played an important role in the evolutionary history of these species, with speciation being influenced by climatic niche differentiation, more prevalent in the last 4 million years, with the main climatic niche shifts occurring between closely related falcon species. By integrating species distribution modeling techniques, phylogenetic comparative methods, and climatic data, we analyzed how European falcon climatic niches have changed over evolutionary time in order to understand their tempo and mode of evolution and gain phylogenetic insights related to the ecological context of falcon evolution. For this purpose, we tested the relative contributions of niche conservatism, convergent evolution, and divergent evolution in the evolutionary history of this group of species in Europe. The occupation of climatic niche spaces by falcon species in Europe was not similar, considering that their climatic niche evolution was characterized by heterotachy, especially after ca. 4 Mya. Our results indicate that convergent evolution and niche divergence played an important role in the evolutionary history of these species, with no significant evidence of closely related species retaining their fundamental niche over time (phylogenetic niche conservatism). In most analyses, less closely related falcon species occupied similar climatic environments. We found that speciation in the European genus Falco was influenced by climatic niche differentiation, more prevalent in the last 4 million years, with the main climatic niche shifts occurring between closely related falcon species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oltenia is located in the southwestern part of Romania, between the Danube, the Olt and the Southern Carpathians. The anthropogenic ecosystems in this part of the country are represented by those areas where human intervention is partial or total. These are confined from the plain to the Sub-Carpathian depressions. In Oltenia, there are to be found anthropogenic ecosystems comprising orchards, vineyards, protected crops (vegetables and flowers), as well as those of human settlements (rural and urban). Some spontaneous species found in these ecosystems are native plants that have shown an increased invasive potential in recent years. The analysis of data collected from the field shows an affinity of some species for certain anthropogenic ecosystems (ex. Calamagrostis epigeios (L.) Roth, Daucus carota L., Elymus repens (L.) Gould - for the orchards; Stellaria media (L.) Vill., Lamium purpureum L., Veronica hederifolia L., V. polita Fr., Senecio vernalis Waldst. et Kit. - for the viticultural ecosystems; Digitaria sanguinalis (L.) Scop., Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop., Sinapis arvensis L., Portulaca oleracea L. - for vegetable crop areas); Cardaria draba (L.) Desv., Capsella bursa pastoris (L.) Medik., Hordeum murinum L., Onopordum acanthium L. - for the human ecosystems. On the other hand, there are certain species found in almost all types of anthropogenic ecosystems: ex. Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers., Convolvulus arvensis L. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity of our planet is rapidly eliminated, at rates much higher than ever observed in human history. The birds of prey, among others few groups of bird species in Europe, have the highest proportion of threatened and near threatened species per taxonomic group and also, 25% of birds of prey species are experiencing population decline. Today, more than never in our modern life, we have to fight for nature conservation. Our understanding of biological diversity has broadened due to the fact that the use of phylogenies in ecology is increasingly common. If our conservation efforts are directed to maximize the preservation of biodiversity in a broad sense, we have to think beyond species. If we treat the species as evolutionary units, and not like types, our conservation efforts will preserve not only the organism, but the organism capacity to responde to environmental changes. In this paper I aimed to highlight the importance of phylogenetic information in conservation of birds of prey species in Europe through the EDGE approach. This metric has been implemented to prioritise species, beeing the only global initiative to focus on conservation of threatened species with significant amount of unique evolutionary history. Using this approach in conservation, we can be more confident that we will have the potential to preserve more functional trait diversity than expected. The top five birds of prey EDGE species in Europe are: osprey (Pandion haliaetus), the black-winged kite (Elanus caeruleus), the egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), the european honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus) and the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), according their EDGE scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper was to identify the main factors that explain the greater part of variation in bird of prey species richness (BPSR) along latitudinal gradient, particularly from Northern Europe to South Africa. For this purpose we used 26 environmental variables grouped according to the main hypotheses proposed to explain the regional variability in species richness. Because the relationship between species richness and environmental variables vary with spatial scale, we used two type of grain size (100 km x 100 km and 200 km x 200 km). To link explanatory environmental variables to BPSR, for each grain size, we used two multiple regression methods: a global model, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS and a local model, the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). Further, we designed 11 different models based on combination of the environmental variables, both for OLS and GWR methods, in order to select the best one. For OLS method, variation in BPSR across the study area was best predicted by total model (all variables), both for finer (R2 adjusted = 0.712; AICc = 22394.89 and coarser spatial scales (R2 adjusted = 0.804; AICc = 4888.98). For GWR method, the (climate + habitat heterogeneity) model was the best model regarding variation explaination and model performances, both for finer (R2 adjusted = 0.953; AICc = 16890.49 and coarser (R2 adjusted = 0.958; AICc = 3909.18) resolutions. The GWR regression models performed better than OLS models in explaining variation in BPSR, the improvement of models performance was evident.In our study, both regression methods and analysis of variance partitioning lead to the conclusion that climate (particularly PC2) and habitat heterogeneity (particularly HABNB) were the most influental factors in determining BPSR at the spatial scales analyzed in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]