Molecular phylogeny of South American screech owls of the Otus atricapillus complex (Aves: Strigidae) inferred from nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene.

The cytochrome b gene of 6 South American screech owls of the genus Otus (O. choliba, O. atricapillus, O. usta, O. sanctaecatarinae, O. guatemalae, and O. hoyi) and two Old World species (Otus scops and Otus leucotis) was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and partially sequenced (300 nucleotides). Otus atricapillus, O. guatemalae, O. hoyi and O. sanctaecatarinae which are morphologically very similar, have been treated as belonging to a single species. A. atricapillus (Sibley and Monroe, 1990). Nucleotide sequences differ substantially between these taxa (6.3 to 8.8% nucleotide substitutions) indicating that they represent well established and distinct species which had been implicated already from ecological and bioacoustical analyses (König, 1991, 1994). The importance of vocal and ecological characters for the taxonomy of nocturnal birds is thus confirmed by our molecular analysis. Phylogenetic relationships were reconstructed between Old and New World owls using character state ("maximum parsimony"; PAUP 3.1.1) and distance matrix methods (neighbour-joining; MEGA).