Department of Ecology &Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Nature. 2015 Oct 22;526(7574):569-73. doi: 10.1038/nature15697. Epub 2015 Oct 7.
Although reconstruction of the phylogeny of living birds has progressed tremendously in the last decade, the evolutionary history of Neoaves--a clade that encompasses nearly all living bird species--remains the greatest unresolved challenge in dinosaur systematics. Here we investigate avian phylogeny with an unprecedented scale of data: >390,000 bases of genomic sequence data from each of 198 species of living birds, representing all major avian lineages, and two crocodilian outgroups. Sequence data were collected using anchored hybrid enrichment, yielding 259 nuclear loci with an average length of 1,523 bases for a total data set of over 7.8 × 10(7) bases. Bayesian and maximum likelihood analyses yielded highly supported and nearly identical phylogenetic trees for all major avian lineages. Five major clades form successive sister groups to the rest of Neoaves: (1) a clade including nightjars, other caprimulgiforms, swifts, and hummingbirds; (2) a clade uniting cuckoos, bustards, and turacos with pigeons, mesites, and sandgrouse; (3) cranes and their relatives; (4) a comprehensive waterbird clade, including all diving, wading, and shorebirds; and (5) a comprehensive landbird clade with the enigmatic hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) as the sister group to the rest. Neither of the two main, recently proposed Neoavian clades--Columbea and Passerea--were supported as monophyletic. The results of our divergence time analyses are congruent with the palaeontological record, supporting a major radiation of crown birds in the wake of the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) mass extinction.
尽管过去十年中生鸟类(涵盖了几乎所有现存鸟类物种的一个演化支系)的系统发育重建取得了巨大的进展,但在恐龙系统学中,它仍然是最大的未解决的挑战。在这里,我们以前所未有的数据规模研究了鸟类的系统发育:198 种现存鸟类物种的基因组序列数据,每个物种的数据都超过 390,000 个碱基,代表了所有主要的鸟类谱系,以及两个鳄鱼外群。使用锚定混合富集法收集序列数据,产生了 259 个核基因座,每个基因座的平均长度为 1,523 个碱基,总数据集超过 7.8 × 10(7)个碱基。贝叶斯和最大似然分析为所有主要的鸟类谱系生成了高度支持且几乎相同的系统发育树。五个主要的分支以连续的姐妹群形式形成了新鸟类的其余部分:(1)一个包含夜鹰、其他夜鹰目、雨燕和蜂鸟的分支;(2)一个联合杜鹃、鸨和犀鸟与鸽子、石鸡和沙鸡的分支;(3)鹤及其近亲;(4)一个全面的水鸟分支,包括所有潜水、涉禽和岸禽;以及(5)一个全面的陆禽分支,其中神秘的麝雉(Opisthocomus hoazin)是其余鸟类的姐妹群。最近提出的两个主要的新鸟类分支——鸽形目和雀形目——都没有得到支持,认为它们是单系的。我们的分歧时间分析结果与古生物学记录一致,支持了冠鸟类在白垩纪-古近纪(K-Pg)大灭绝之后的主要辐射。