Falcated Duck

About the Falcated Duck

The falcated duck or falcated teal (Mareca falcata) is a gadwall-sized dabbling duck from the east Palearctic (East Siberia and Mongolia to North Japan; wintering to India). The closest relative of this species is the gadwall, followed by the wigeons. The species was assigned to the proposed genus Mareca after its previous placement in the genus Anas was found to be paraphyletic in 2009.

There are many species that have mitochondrial DNA lineages that are phylogenetically intermixed with other species, but studies have rarely tested the cause of such paraphyly. In a study that was conducted, there were tested two hypotheses that could explain mitochondrial paraphyly of Holarctic gadwalls (Anas strepera) with respect to Asian falcated ducks (A. falcata). First, hybridization could have resulted in falcated duck mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) introgressing into the gadwall gene pool. Second, gadwalls and falcated ducks could have diverged so recently that mtDNA lineages have not sorted to reciprocal monophyly. They used coalescent analyses of three independent loci to distinguish between these two hypotheses. Two lines of evidence support introgression. First, analyses of the... Wikipedia →