Mitogenomic evidence of close relationships between New Zealand’s extinct giant raptors and small-sized Australian sister-taxa

The estimated divergence time for the Cathartiformes and Accipitriformes split is 61.1 MYA.

“but they estimated a older date for the Cathartiformes and Accipitriformes split (~69 MYA), whereas our estimate (61.1 MYA) was more similar to those of Jarvis et al. (2014) and Knapp et al. (2019).”

These divergence estimates were similar to those inferred by Johnson et al. (2016) and Knapp et al. (2019).

“These estimates were similar to those inferred by Johnson et al. (2016) and Knapp et al. (2019”

The estimate for the common ancestor of modern Aquilinae is 15.6 MYA.

“However, our estimate for the common ancestor of modern Aquilinae (15.6 MYA) was similar to Knapp et al. (2019;c.17 MYA), but much older than Mindell et al. (2018;c.10 MYA).”

Our topology for Circus generally agreed with previous studies, except that we recovered C. assimilis (and therefore C. teauteenis) as sister to the rest of Circus, rather than sister to one of two main clades within Circus.

“In general, our topology agreed with previous studies (Oatley et al., 2015;Mindell et al., 2018;Knapp et al., 2019), with the exception of the placement of C. assimilis (and therefore C. teauteenis), which we recovered as sister to the rest of Circus, rather than sister to one of two main clades within Circus.”

Our data indicate that the extinct Eyles's Harrier, C. teauteenis, was sister of Spotted Harrier, C. assimilis.

“Corroborating Knapp et al. (2019), our data indicate that the extinct Eyles's Harrier, C. teauteenis Forbes, 1892, known from New Zealand, was sister of Spotted Harrier, C. assimilis Jardine and Selby, 1828, (found in Australia and some islands).”