The barn owl, Tyto alba (Scopoli 1769), occurs worldwide and shows a considerable amount of morphological and geographical variation, leading to the recognition of many subspecies around the world. But comprehensive studies about this species are yet to be done. Statistical and evolutionary models for morphological characters and mitochondrial genes (CYTB) are analysed for 31 individuals around the world. We used Maximum likelihood (ML), maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian analysis to show genetic variation between the alba clade (old world) and furcata clade (new world) and to compare their topology. All statistical and evolutionary models suggest that barn owls of the Old World may be a separate species from those of the New World.

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