APRIL 1,
2019
Scientists
have reconstructed the tree of life for all major lineages of perching birds,
also known as passerines, a large and diverse group of more than 6,000 species
that includes familiar birds like cardinals, warblers, jays and sparrows.
Louisiana State University (LSU) researchers led the massive project using 221
bird specimens from 48 countries, including 56 tissue samples from the LSU
Museum of Natural Science's Collection of Genetic Resources. Using these
samples, they extracted and sequenced DNA representing all passerine families,
and they used these sequence data to understand how passerine species are
related and to study when and how passerines diversified in relation to Earth's
history.
"In
addition to inferring how these species are
related, our in-depth study found that changes in global temperature or
colonization of new continents were not the sole drivers of passerine
diversification, as previously suggested. Instead, our results indicate more
complex mechanisms were at play to spark bursts of passerine speciation around
the globe," said lead author Carl Oliveros, a postdoctoral researcher in
the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU.
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