Recent large phylogenomic studies of Neoaves have led to much progress on defining orders and supraordinal groups within Neoaves, even though they have failed to come to a consensus on an overall high order topology of these groups.[1][2][3][4] A genomic study of 48 taxa by Jarvis et al. (2014) divided Neoaves into two main clades, Columbea and Passerea, but an analysis of 198 taxa by Prum et al. (2015) recovered different groupings for the earliest split in Neoaves.[1][2] A reanalysis with an extended dataset by Reddy et al. (2017) suggested this was due to the type of sequence data, with coding sequences favouring the Prum topology.[3] The disagreement on topology even with large phylogenomic studies led Suh (2016) to propose a hard polytomy of nine clades as the base of Neoaves.[5] An analysis by Houde et al. (2019) recovered Columbea and a reduced hard polytomy of six clades within Passerea.[6]
Nevertheless, these studies do agree on a number of supraorderal groups, which Reddy et al. (2017) dubbed the "magnificent seven", which together with three "orphaned orders" make up Neoaves.[3] Significantly, they both include a large waterbird clade (Aequornithes) and a large landbird clade (Telluraves). The groups defined by Reddy et al. (2017) are as follows:
- The "magnificent seven" supraordinal clades:
- Telluraves (landbirds)
- Aequornithes (waterbirds)
- Eurypygimorphae (sunbittern, kagu and tropicbirds)
- Otidimorphae (turacos, bustards and cuckoos)
- Strisores (nightjars, swifts, hummingbirds and allies)
- Columbimorphae (mesites, sandgrouse and pigeons)
- Mirandornithes (flamingos and grebes)
- The three orphaned orders:
Phylogenies
More information Jarvis et al. (2014) ...
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More information Prum et al. (2015) ...
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More information Suh (2016) — a hard polytomy ...
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More information Reddy et al. (2017) (Early bird II tree, mostly non-coding) ...
- Turacos were recovered outside Otidimorphae as sister to Gruiformes
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More information Houde et al. (2019) — a hard polytomy in Passerea ...
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More information Braun & Kimball (2021) — consensus tree with soft polytomies at the base of Neoaves and in Passerea ...
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More information Kuhl et al. (2021) ...
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More information Wu et al. (2024) ...
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More information Houde et al. (2019) (combined intron+UCE nt+indel datasets) ...
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Comparison of different proposals for Neoavian radiation
Source: Neoaves (11 December 2016))
One hypothesis for the phylogeny of modern birds was presented by Jarvis et al. (2014).[12] The following cladogram illustrates the proposed relationships, with some taxon names following Yury, T. et al. (2013).[13]
Source: Neoaves (12 December 2017))
One hypothesis for the phylogeny of modern birds was presented by Prum, R.O. et al. (2015)[8] The following cladogram illustrates the proposed relationships, with some taxon names following Yury, T. et al. (2013).[14]
Prum, Richard O.; Berv, Jacob S.; Dornburg, Alex; Field, Daniel J.; Townsend, Jeffrey P.; Lemmon, Emily Moriarty; Lemmon, Alan R. (2015). "A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing". Nature. 526 (7574): 569–573. doi:10.1038/nature15697. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 26444237.
Reddy, Sushma; Kimball, Rebecca T.; Pandey, Akanksha; Hosner, Peter A.; Braun, Michael J.; Hackett, Shannon J.; Han, Kin-Lan; Harshman, John; Huddleston, Christopher J.; Kingston, Sarah; Marks, Ben D.; Miglia, Kathleen J.; Moore, William S.; Sheldon, Frederick H.; Witt, Christopher C.; Yuri, Tamaki; Braun, Edward L. (2017). "Why Do Phylogenomic Data Sets Yield Conflicting Trees? Data Type Influences the Avian Tree of Life more than Taxon Sampling". Systematic Biology. 66 (5): 857–879. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syx041. ISSN 1063-5157. PMID 28369655.
Braun, Edward L.; Cracraft, Joel; Houde, Peter (2019). "Resolving the Avian Tree of Life from Top to Bottom: The Promise and Potential Boundaries of the Phylogenomic Era". Avian Genomics in Ecology and Evolution. pp. 151–210. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16477-5_6. ISBN 978-3-030-16476-8.
Wua, Shaoyuan; Rheindt, Frank E.; Zhang, Jin; Wang, Jiajia; Zhang, Lei; Quan, Cheng; Li, Zhiheng; Wang, Min; Wu, Feixiang; Qu, Yanhua; Edwards, Scott V.; Zhou, Zhonghe; Liu, Liang (2024). "Genomes, fossils, and the concurrent rise of modern birds and flowering plants in the Late Cretaceous". PNAS. 121 (8): e2319696121. doi:10.1073/pnas.2319696121.