BOOM, #BirdTwitter! Flashy new family tree of #birds just landed in @Nature: doi.org/10.1038/s41586…. From @B10K_Project, led by @RubySeadragon, using nearly 1 BILLION ACT&Gs, we improve age estimates vastly & introduce cool new clade #Elementaves. 🧵 #ornithology #phylogenomics
We named it #Elementaves since it’s diversified into terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial niches corresponding to the classical #elements of earth, water, and air. So, what about fire? Well, several species within Phaethontimorphae have names derived from the sun, a big ball of fire.
Here’s a handy comparison to the 2 previous main avian trees by Jarvis et al. (2014) and Prum et al. (2015). Some reshuffling! This new tree is derived with coalescence-based analyses of 363 species in a 63-Mbp matrix of intergenic DNA—state of the art #phylogenomics.
So, can you trust the new tree? A #phylogeny is not the truth, but MANY analyses assess this in the paper. A cool aspect is that the morphology of the birds lends the tree some credibility: in brief, 9 phenotypic traits track the new tree more tightly with less inferred shifts!
Elementaves collage & credits (most CC0 license). Water: Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), Common Loon (Gavia immer). Earth: Indian Nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus) [Hari K Patibanda, flic.kr/p/2oM6rs3, CC BY-NC 2.0], Tasmanian Nativehen (Tribonyx mortierii).