Final remarks
The frequently adopted biological concept has been criticized (Häuser, 1987) since many biological species and subspecies seems to be unsuitable for practical or theoretical purposes. Thus, it is likely that differentiation processes reported across several groups of Neotropical birds (Harvey et al., 2017; McGuire et al., 2014) are being overlooked. The Anthropocene, with its widely recognized adverse impacts on biodiversity, driven by the current trends of wide and quick habitat conversion (Gaston et al., 2003), and climatic change (Devictor et al., 2008; Urban, 2015) worsens this scenario. In consequence, as indicated by Mishler (2021), the adoption of less restrictive concepts, as the phylogenetic one, will allow abandoning the biases and restrictions imposed by the use of the species rank, improving the evolutive and ecological research, and ultimately influencing positively areas of public interest such as conservation.
The traditional use of single umbrella species for conservation purposes received critics since a single species can hardly encapsulate the environmental requirements and geographical distribution of the remaining species to be protected (Fourcade et al., 2013). Consequently, alternative multi-species approaches appeared, balancing the number of taxa involved and their sensitivity to area/resources requirements (including connectivity and natural processes) to establish realistic, concrete and quantitative landscape design criteria (Lambeck, 1997; Roberge & Angelstam, 2004). As top predators with variable size, and differential environmental sensitivity and requirements, owls are good candidates to be considered for a multi-taxa approach, for which our study serves as a hurrying call to explore in-depth owl lineage diversification in Brazil to improve biodiversity-related efforts.