Complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequences show that modern birds are not descended from transitional shorebirds

Paton, Tara; Haddrath, Oliver; Baker, Allan J.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2002.1961

Cited by 123 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Although the traditional view is that the root lies between paleognath and neognath clades (12,27,46), early analyses of mtDNA placed the root either between passerines and all other birds (47) or within passerines (48,49), contradicting neognath monophyly. More sophisticated analyses (e.g., RY-coding) of mtDNA data strongly support the traditional rooting (22,23,50,51), unlike the early analyses. Some morphological studies also suggest nonmonophyly of paleognaths (8,45).…”

Section: Monophyly Of Australasian Ratites Placement Of Tinamous Anmentioning

confidence: 89%

Phylogenomic evidence for multiple losses of flight in ratite birds

Harshman

Braun

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

194

227

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Ratites (ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, and kiwis) are large, flightless birds that have long fascinated biologists. Their current distribution on isolated southern land masses is believed to reflect the breakup of the paleocontinent of Gondwana. The prevailing view is that ratites are monophyletic, with the flighted tinamous as their sister group, suggesting a single loss of flight in the common ancestry of ratites. However, phylogenetic analyses of 20 unlinked nuclear genes reveal a genome-wide signal that unequivocally places tinamous within ratites, making ratites polyphyletic and suggesting multiple losses of flight. Phenomena that can mislead phylogenetic analyses, including long branch attraction, base compositional bias, discordance between gene trees and species trees, and sequence alignment errors, have been eliminated as explanations for this result. The most plausible hypothesis requires at least three losses of flight and explains the many morphological and behavioral similarities among ratites by parallel or convergent evolution. Finally, this phylogeny demands fundamental reconsideration of proposals that relate ratite evolution to continental drift.convergence ͉ flightlessness ͉ Paleognath ͉ homoplasy ͉ vicariance biogeography

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Section: Monophyly Of Australasian Ratites Placement Of Tinamous Anmentioning

confidence: 89%

Phylogenomic evidence for multiple losses of flight in ratite birds

Harshman

Braun

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

194

227

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Molecular clock data, on the other hand, consistently date the divergence time of many modern avian clades far into the Cretaceous (e.g. Hedges et al, 1996;Cooper & Penny, 1997 ;Kumar & Hedges, 1998 ;Waddell et al, 1999 ;Paton, Haddrath & Baker, 2002 ;.…”

Section: Diversification Time Of Modern Neornithine Lineagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paleogene fossil record of birds in Europe

2005

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The Paleogene (Paleocene-Oligocene) fossil record of birds in Europe is reviewed and recent and fossil taxa are placed into a phylogenetic framework, based on published cladistic analyses. The pre-Oligocene European avifauna is characterized by the complete absence of passeriform birds, which today are the most diverse and abundant avian taxon. Representatives of small non-passeriform perching birds thus probably had similar ecological niches before the Oligocene to those filled by modern passerines. The occurrence of passerines towards the Lower Oligocene appears to have had a major impact on these birds, and the surviving crown-group members of many small arboreal Eocene taxa show highly specialized feeding strategies not found or rare in passeriform birds. It is detailed that no crown-group members of modern 'families ' are known from preOligocene deposits of Europe, or anywhere else. The phylogenetic position of Paleogene birds thus indicates that diversification of the crown-groups of modern avian 'families ' did not take place before the Oligocene, irrespective of their relative position within Neornithes (crown-group birds). The Paleogene fossil record of birds does not even support crown-group diversification of Galliformes, one of the most basal taxa of neognathous birds, before the Oligocene, and recent molecular studies that dated diversification of galliform crown-group taxa into the Middle Cretaceous are shown to be based on an incorrect interpretation of the fossil taxa used for molecular clock calibrations. Several taxa that occur in the Paleogene of Europe have a very different distribution than their closest extant relatives. The modern survivors of these Paleogene lineages are not evenly distributed over the continents, and especially the great number of taxa that are today restricted to South and Central America is noteworthy. The occurrence of stem-lineage representatives of many taxa that today have a restricted Southern Hemisphere distribution conflicts with recent hypotheses on a Cretaceous vicariant origin of these taxa, which were deduced from the geographical distribution of the basal crown-group members.

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“…However, at deeper phylogenetic levels, such as the basal relationships of birds and mammals, congruence between mitochondrial and nuclear sequences proved more difficult to recover due to the stronger effects of mutational bias in the mitochondrial genome (Paton et al, 2002;Phillips and Penny, 2003). This varying degree of congruence between mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data means that levels of conflict vs. congruence must be assessed on a case by case basis, because they depend on the phylogenetic level of interest and the particular kind of sequences involved.…”

Section: Nuclear-mitochondrial Congruencementioning

confidence: 99%