Abstract
Rapid sequential speciation events can outpace the fixation of genetic variants, resulting in a family tree that lacks clear branching patterns. A new study of bird genomes reveals such an explosive super-radiation that may coincide with the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Highlights
Almost all of the remaining 36 living bird lineages seem to have emerged in one go, and attempts to resolve the relationships between these branches in the deepest thicket have been challenging and seem to deliver contradictory answers
Together with the sequence of their immediate genomic neighborhood, these 2,118 elements formed an exhaustive catalogue of the retrotransposon insertion events that had happened during the neoavian radiation process
Boiling these elements down to a matrix of presence-versus-absence across the 48 genomes, the authors were able to construct the most parsimonious phylogenetic tree for Neoaves, which tallied well with trees derived by more traditional methods
Summary
Almost all of the remaining 36 living bird lineages (together comprising more than 10,000 species in the group known as Neoaves) seem to have emerged in one go, and attempts to resolve the relationships between these branches in the deepest thicket have been challenging and seem to deliver contradictory answers. This process, called incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), can result in different parts of the genome, appearing to give incompatible versions of the phylogenetic tree.
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