ABSTRACT
Oil and its pollutants, which enter environment through natural oil seepage and many human activities, have considerable impacts on birds. We summarized the research advances in how oil pollutants influence birds and the cleaning technology of polluted birds and their habitats. The toxicity and destruction to feather structure are the major impacts of oil pollution on birds. Oil pollution can lead to birds' death, and also produce many chronic harms, including causing hemolytic anemia, reducing their immunity, disrupting thermal insulation and waterproo-fing performance of feather. It is an important way to reduce the impacts of oil pollution on birds by timely cleaning up the oil in bird habitats as well as carrying out the clean and repair work to the polluted birds. As a big oil-consuming country, China has been left behind by foreign countries in the studies of the effects of oil pollution on birds. More attention should be paid on the short-term and long-term impacts of oil pollution on birds and the cleaning and remediation technologies of the polluted birds and their habitats.
Subject(s)
Environmental Pollutants , Petroleum Pollution , Water Pollutants, Chemical , Animals , Birds , Ecosystem , Environmental Pollutants/toxicity , Humans , Water Pollutants, Chemical/analysisABSTRACT
Understanding and resolving conflicts between phenotypic and genetic differentiation is central to evolutionary research. While phenotypically monomorphic species may exhibit deep genetic divergences, some morphologically distinct taxa lack notable genetic differentiation. Here we conduct a molecular investigation of an enigmatic shorebird with a convoluted taxonomic history, the White-faced Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus dealbatus), widely regarded as a subspecies of the Kentish Plover (C. alexandrinus). Described as distinct in 1863, its name was consistently misapplied in subsequent decades until taxonomic clarification ensued in 2008. Using a recently proposed test of species delimitation, we reconfirm the phenotypic distinctness of dealbatus. We then compare three mitochondrial and seven nuclear DNA markers among 278 samples of dealbatus and alexandrinus from across their breeding range and four other closely related plovers. We fail to find any population genetic differentiation between dealbatus and alexandrinus, whereas the other species are deeply diverged at the study loci. Kentish Plovers join a small but growing list of species for which low levels of genetic differentiation are accompanied by the presence of strong phenotypic divergence, suggesting that diagnostic phenotypic characters may be encoded by few genes that are difficult to detect. Alternatively, gene expression differences may be crucial in producing different phenotypes whereas neutral differentiation may be lagging behind.
