Milvus is a genus of medium-sized birds of prey. The genus was erected by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799 with the red kite as the type species. The name is the Latin word for the red kite.
The genus Milvus has in the past been placed in the subfamily Milvinae but molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that such a grouping is polyphyletic for Buteoninae. It is now placed in the subfamily Buteoninae.
Species
The genus contains three species.
Allozyme data indicates that the genetic diversity in both black and red kites is rather low. Successful hybridization between Milvus kites is fairly commonplace, making mtDNA analyses unreliable to resolve the genus' phylogeny. Furthermore, there is no good correlation between molecular characters and biogeography and morphology in the red kite due to very incomplete lineage sorting.
The yellow-billed kite is apparently a separate species, as indicated by mtDNA phylogeny showing two supported clades, biogeography,
Further reading
- Crochet, Pierre-André (2005): Recent DNA studies of kites. Birding World 18(12): 486–488. HTML section list