Enigmas no longer: using Ultraconserved Elements to place several unusual hawk taxa and address the non-monophyly of the genusAccipiter(Accipitriformes: Accipitridae)

Abstract

Hawks, eagles, and their relatives (Accipitriformes: Accipitridae) are a diverse and charismatic clade of modern birds, with many members that are instantly recognized by the general public. However, surprisingly little is known about the relationships among genera within Accipitridae, and several studies have suggested that some genera (in particular, the megadiverse genusAccipiter) are not monophyletic. Here, we combine a new large dataset obtained from Ultraconserved Elements (UCEs), generated from whole genome sequencing (WGS) of 120 species, with publicly available legacy markers (i.e., a suite of commonly sequenced mitochondrial and nuclear genes) to infer a well-supported, time-calibrated phylogeny of 236 extant or recently extinct species. Our densely-sampled phylogeny, which includes 90% of recognized species, confirms the non-monophyly ofAccipiterand provides a sufficient basis to revise the genus-level taxonomy, such that all genera in Accipitridae represent monophyletic groups.