News from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute in Africa - Birds & Birding

"News from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute: Untangling the Illadopsis family tree"

"Africa’s lowland rainforests blanket a swathe of the continent from Sierra Leone eastwards to the Rift Valley. These forests are rather uniform, and ornithologists have long been puzzled by the unexpectedly high number of bird species occurring in this biome. One hypothesis that has been advanced to explain the diverse avifauna centres on the cyclical climate changes that occurred in Africa during the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted from about 1.8 million years ago (mya) until 10 000 years ago. During this era, ice ages that saw much of the northern hemisphere periodically covered by glaciers caused Africa’s climate to enter drier, cooler phases. The dry phases alternated with periods of warm and humid conditions, prompting rainforests to undergo cycles of contraction and expansion..."

PFIAO 2009. News from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute: Untangling the Illadopsis family tree.