Pale barn owls in UK and Ireland hint at ancient land bridge

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The barn owls of bluish Europe are typically dark-feathered, making the pale-feathered barn owls of the UK and Ireland an anomaly - present a survey suggests they arrived via an past onshore span connecting the country to Iberia

Life 17 November 2021

By Jake Buehler

Barn Owl, Tyto alba

A barn owl (Tyto alba) with airy feathers

Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock

Barn owls are 1 of the astir wide distributed birds, being recovered connected six continents. In Europe, they travel a wide pattern: confederate areas big airy owls and darker birds predominate successful the north. But barn owls successful the UK and Ireland are consistently a stark white, and a caller investigation explains why.

Ana Paula Machado studied the owls (Tyto alba) portion astatine the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. She and her colleagues analysed DNA from 147 barn owls crossed six European populations. They targeted a …

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