LACK OF ALLOZYME VARIATION IN THE SPANISH IMPERIAL EAGLE AQUILA-ADALBERTI

The breeding population of the Spanish Imperial Eagle Aquila adalberti is reduced to 126 pairs located in the southwestern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. Protein electrophoresis was used to determine levels of genetic variation in the seven extant subpopulations of the species. Seventeen proteins encoded by 22 putative loci showed no variation among all the individuals which were analysed. The population crashed at the beginning of this century, but the long generation time of the species makes it improbable that a population bottleneck was the only cause of the lack of genetic variation. As an alternative explanation, a natural background of low variation cannot be discounted.