Josefin Stiller, Shaohong Feng, Al-Aabid Chowdhury, Iker Rivas-González, David A Duchêne, Qi Fang, Yuan Deng, Alexey Kozlov, Alexandros Stamatakis, Santiago Claramunt, Jacqueline M T Nguyen, Simon Y W Ho, Brant C Faircloth, Julia Haag, Peter Houde, Joel Cracraft, Metin Balaban, Uyen Mai, Guangji Chen, Rongsheng Gao, Chengran Zhou, Yulong Xie, Zijian Huang, Zhen Cao, Zhi Yan, Huw A Ogilvie, Luay Nakhleh, Bent Lindow, Benoit Morel, Jon Fjeldså, Peter A Hosner, Rute R da Fonseca, Bent Petersen, Joseph A Tobias, Tamás Székely, Jonathan David Kennedy, Andrew Hart Reeve, Andras Liker, Martin Stervander, Agostinho Antunes, Dieter Thomas Tietze, Mads Bertelsen, Fumin Lei, Carsten Rahbek, Gary R Graves, Mikkel H Schierup, Tandy Warnow, Edward L Braun, M Thomas P Gilbert, Erich D Jarvis, Siavash Mirarab, Guojie Zhang
Despite tremendous efforts in the past decades, relationships among main avian lineages remain heavily debated without a clear resolution. Discrepancies have been attributed to diversity of species sampled, phylogenetic method, and the choice of genomic regions 1-3 . Here, we address these issues by analyzing genomes of 363 bird species 4 (218 taxonomic families, 92% of total). Using intergenic regions and coalescent methods, we present a well-supported tree but also a remarkable degree of discordance. The tree confirms that Neoaves experienced rapid radiation at or near the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary...
April 1, 2024: Nature