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Résumé :
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Rise of agriculture and livestock growing during the Mesolithic‐Neolithic transition gave birth to a new biotope, the farmland, which in a few thousand years reached a planetary scale at the expense of natural ecosystems. This widespread land use change implied a demise of many avian species as its natural habitats were replaced by crops and grazing lands. However, it became into a new habitat for some steppe, grassland and savannah birds who were able to shift from its natural habitats to human‐made environments. Some avian species of many bird families found there a land of opportunity, among them a few buttonquail (Turnicidae) species. However, the recent farmland intensification is leading to a general decline of these species. In this PhD we use the Andalusian Buttonquail (Turnix sylvaticus sylvaticus) as a case study of a taxon, at least in part, able to cope with traditional farming, which until recently had a wide distribution in the western Mediterranean countries, and currently is in the verge of extinction. Starting from a global and historical scale approach, contextualizing the taxon at biogeographic and taxonomic levels, we will arrive at the "in situ" study of the only population that still survives. Firstly, we will try to establish the historical evolution of the extinction process in Europe and North Africa, to model and evaluate the historical distribution area based on environmental variables and to establish the phylogeographic relationships of the historical populations of this subspecies and their relationship with the rest of the species of the family. Secondly, the study of the population present in Morocco is carried out in order to determine the size of the population at different times, to evaluate the population trend and to describe habitat selection and reproductive biology.
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