Foraging ecomorphology within North American flycatchers and a test of concordance with southern African species

In both the Old and New Worlds, independent clades of sit-and-wait insectivorous birds have evolved. These independent radiations provide an excellent opportunity to test whether the relationships between morphology and ecology are concordant among different communities of flycatchers. First, with canonical correlation analysis, I test for significant relationships between foraging behavior and morphology in North American (NA) and southern African (SA) flycatcher communities. Second, using ordination and analysis of covariance, I test for concordant ecomorphological relationships between the localities. Also, I accounted for phylogeny to see if observed patterns were adaptive. Morphology predicted the foraging behavior in both NA and SA flycatchers. Smaller bill features and longer legs are related to perching and attacking prey items near or on the ground. Larger bill features and short legs are associated with flycatching behavior and high, open perches. The ANCOVA reveals concordance in their ecomorphological relationships, but only in a single ecomorphological axis. The lack of complete concordance may be due to differences in habitat or broad scale historical influences between NA and SA flycatchers. © Dt. Ornithologen-Gesellschaft e.V. 2007.