Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38560995/)
These scientists studied the family tree of birds to understand how different bird species are related to each other. They looked at the DNA of 363 bird species, which is a lot of different kinds of birds. By studying the parts of the DNA that are between genes and using a special method called coalescent analysis, they were able to create a tree that shows how these birds are related to each other.
The scientists found that a group of birds called Neoaves had a big burst of evolution around the time when the dinosaurs went extinct. They also learned that having enough different parts of the DNA to study was more important than having a lot of different bird species to get a clear picture of how they are related.
Some parts of the tree were still tricky to figure out because of things like differences in DNA, how fast the DNA changes, or even ancient hybridization events where different species mixed their DNA. The scientists also found that after the dinosaurs went extinct, birds started to evolve more quickly, leading to changes in their population size, how fast their DNA changes, and even the size of their brains.
Overall, this study helped the scientists learn more about how modern birds evolved and how they are all connected to each other. This information can be used for future studies to learn more about different bird species and their characteristics.
Stiller J., Feng S., Chowdhury AA., Rivas-Gonzalez I., Duchene DA., Fang Q., Deng Y., Kozlov A., Stamatakis A., Claramunt S., Nguyen JMT., Ho SYW., Faircloth BC., Haag J., Houde P., Cracraft J., Balaban M., Mai U., Chen G., Gao R., Zhou C., Xie Y., Huang Z., Cao Z., Yan Z., Ogilvie HA., Nakhleh L., Lindow B., Morel B., Fjeldsa J., Hosner PA., da Fonseca RR., Petersen B., Tobias JA., Szekely T., Kennedy JD., Reeve AH., Liker A., Stervander M., Antunes A., Tietze DT., Bertelsen MF., Lei F., Rahbek C., Graves GR., Schierup MH., Warnow T., Braun EL., Gilbert MTP., Jarvis ED., Mirarab S., Zhang G. Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes. Nature. 2024 May;629(8013):851-860. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07323-1. Epub 2024 Apr 1.