ARDC Research Link Australia

ORCID Profile
Orcid icon. 0000-0002-9510-3744

Current Organisations
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution , National Institutes of Health , Biological Imaging Core, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

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Publications

Publication

Earth history and the passerine superradiation

Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Date: 04-2019

DOI: 10.1073/PNAS.1813206116

Abstract: Avian ersification has been influenced by global climate change, plate tectonic movements, and mass extinction events. However, the impact of these factors on the ersification of the hyper erse perching birds (passerines) is unclear because family level relationships are unresolved and the timing of splitting events among lineages is uncertain. We analyzed DNA data from 4,060 nuclear loci and 137 passerine families using concatenation and coalescent approaches to infer a comprehensive phylogenetic hypothesis that clarifies relationships among all passerine families. Then, we calibrated this phylogeny using 13 fossils to examine the effects of different events in Earth history on the timing and rate of passerine ersification. Our analyses reconcile passerine ersification with the fossil and geological records suggest that passerines originated on the Australian landmass ∼47 Ma and show that subsequent dispersal and ersification of passerines was affected by a number of climatological and geological events, such as Oligocene glaciation and inundation of the New Zealand landmass. Although passerine ersification rates fluctuated throughout the Cenozoic, we find no link between the rate of passerine ersification and Cenozoic global temperature, and our analyses show that the increases in passerine ersification rate we observe are disconnected from the colonization of new continents. Taken together, these results suggest more complex mechanisms than temperature change or ecological opportunity have controlled macroscale patterns of passerine speciation.