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What looks like a typo in the title of this entry is actually not. If you’re familiar with phylogenetics, now’s the time to get ready for phylogenomics. That’s right; a taxonomy of the genome, not just the gene. An article published in last month’s Science makes the recent revises to avian taxonomy we’ve noticed in our field guides (What are the ducks doing up front?) look like chicken feed. See a brief report of it here. Apparently the people at Chicago’s Field Museum have been pretty busy over the last five years.

According to the paper, one of the most surprising relationships the effort discovered is the closeness of the Passeriformes (AKA perching birds or songbirds) to Psittaciformes (parrots and allies). Even more surprising, perhaps, is that the Falconidae (falcons) are a sister group, much more closely related to the passeriformes than to Accipitridae (Hawks and Osprey).

Another interesting discovery was that hummingbirds apparently evolved from nightjars!

To truly understand the paper, it helps to have a background in cladistics or phylogenetic systematics. If you (like me) lack this background, try this tutorial from the nice folks at UC Berkeley.

Looks like there’s going to be another round of updates to our field guides soon…