Comment

Video: Jive Dinosaur Turkeys

273
Randall Gross2/08/2009 5:08:05 pm PST

Back in June they completed a phylogenomic study and it caused a huge resort of the modern avian phlogenetic tree.

eurekalert.org

“Our study and the remarkable new understanding of the evolutionary relationships of birds that it affords was possible only because of the technological advances of the last few years that have enabled us to sample larger portions of genomes,” said Shannon Hackett, one of three lead authors and associate curator of birds at The Field Museum. “Our study yielded robust results and illustrates the power of collecting genome-scale data to reconstruct difficult evolutionary trees.”

The results of the study are so broad that the scientific names of dozens of birds will have to be changed, and biology textbooks and birdwatchers’ field guides will have to be revised. For example, we now know that:

Birds adapted to the diverse environments several distinct times because many birds that now live on water (such as flamingos, tropicbirds and grebes) did not evolve from a different waterbird group, and many birds that now live on land (such as turacos, doves, sandgrouse and cuckoos) did not evolve from a different landbird group.
Similarly, distinctive lifestyles (such as nocturnal, raptorial and pelagic, i.e., living on the ocean or open seas) evolved several times. For example, contrary to conventional thinking, colorful, daytime hummingbirds evolved from drab nocturnal nightjars; falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles; and tropicbirds (white, swift-flying ocean birds) are not closely related to pelicans and other waterbirds.
Shorebirds are not a basal evolutionary group, which refutes the widely held view that shorebirds gave rise to all modern birds.

“With this study, we learned two major things,” said Sushma Reddy, another lead author and Bucksbaum Postdoctoral Fellow at The Field Museum. “First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong.”