Origin of a White-tailed Eagle wintering on Tsushima Island, Japan, established by mitochondrial and nuclear DNA analyses

Abstract

The White-tailed Eagle breeds and winters on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. It is not known whether wintering eagles occasionally observed in southern Japan migrate there from the Hokkaido population or arrive from an Asian continental population. To further our understanding of their migration, we examined a nucleotide sequence of mitochondrial DNA and a multilocus genotype from the nuclear DNA of an eagle found wintering on Tsushima Island, southern Japan. Our results revealed that the eagle had originated from a continental population.