The Buteoninae are a subfamily of
birds of prey which consists of medium to large, broad-winged
species.
They have large, powerful, hooked
beaks for tearing flesh from their prey, strong legs, and powerful
talons. They also have extremely keen eyesight to enable them to spot potential
prey from a distance.
This subfamily contains the
buzzards (buteonine hawks) with great diversity in appearance and form and some appearing eagle-like, with at least 50 species included overall in the subfamily. At one time, several types were grouped, including large assemblages such as booted eagles, but modern studies using
mitochondrial DNA clarified that this subfamily was smaller than formerly classified.[1][2][3]
Systematics
The subfamily Buteoninae was introduced (as "Buteonina") by the Irish zoologist
Nicholas Vigors in 1825 with Buteo as the
type genus.[4][5] The subfamily includes about 79 currently recognized species.[6] Unlike many lineages of
Accipitridae, which seemed to have radiated out of Africa or South Asia, the Buteoninae clearly originated in the Americas based on fossil records and current species distributions (more than 75% of the extant raptors from this lineage are found in the Americas).[7][8]
A genus level
cladogram of the Buteoninae is shown below. It is based on a
molecular phylogenetic study of the family Accipitridae by Therese Catanach and collaborators that was published in 2024.[9]
Buteoninae
Milvini
Milvus – kites (3 species - with split of yellow-billed)
^Lerner, H. R., Klaver, M. C., & Mindell, D. P. (2008). Molecular phylogenetics of the Buteonine birds of prey (Accipitridae). The Auk, 125(2), 304-315.
^Lerner, H. R., & Mindell, D. P. (2005). Phylogeny of eagles, Old World vultures, and other Accipitridae based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 37(2), 327-346.
^Lerner, H., Christidis, L., Gamauf, A., Griffiths, C., Haring, E., Huddleston, C. J., Kabra, S., Kocum, A., Krosby, M., Kvaloy, K., Mindell, D., Rasmussen, P., Rov, N., Wadleigh, R., Michael Wink & Gjershaug, J. O. (2017). Phylogeny and new taxonomy of the Booted Eagles (Accipitriformes: Aquilinae). Zootaxa 4216 (4), 301-320.
^Catanach, T.A.; Halley, M.R.; Pirro, S. (2024). "Enigmas no longer: using ultraconserved elements to place several unusual hawk taxa and address the non-monophyly of the genus Accipiter (Accipitriformes: Accipitridae)". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society: blae028.
doi:
10.1093/biolinnean/blae028.