Thursday, September 16, 2010

bird




Early Bird Trees Available for Download
Phylogeny of the Families of Birds From Sibley and Ahlquist
This data set describes the phylogenetic relationships of the orders of birds as reported by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990)
Tyranni - The suborder of passerine birds Tyranni (the suboscines) includes about 1,000 species, the large majority of which are South American.

These have a different anatomy of the syrinx musculature than the songbirds in the suborder Passeri, the oscine passerines. The available morphological, mt and nDNA sequence, and biogeographical data, as well as the (scant) fossil record, agrees that the Tyranni and Passeri suborders are evolutionarily distinct clades.
Passerine - A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species,[1] it is roughly twice as species rich as the largest of the mammal orders, the Rodentia.

The names "passerines" and "Passeriformes" are derived from Passer domesticus, the scientific name of the type species ? the House Sparrow ? and ultimately from the Latin term passer for Passer sparrows and similar small birds.
Nine-primaried oscine
Songbird - A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (order Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as scientific or vernacular name is Oscines. This group contains some 4000 species, in which the vocal organ typically is developed in such a way as to produce a diverse and elaborate bird song.

This 'bird song' is essentially territorial in that it communicates the identity and whereabouts of an individual to other birds and also signals sexual intentions. It is not to be confused with bird calls, which are used for alarms and contact, and are especially important in birds that feed or migrate in flocks. While almost all living birds give calls of some sort, well-developed songs are only given by a few lineages outside the songbirds.

Analyses of Phylogenetics and Evolution
Aves: Systematics - Birds arose from theropod dinosaurs at some point in the Jurassic, according to present knowledge. Birds, together with the rest of the dinosaurs, the crocodilians, and their relatives are classified together in the Archosauria.
Bird Systematics
Bird evolutionary tree given a shake by DNA study

PhyloFinder: An intelligent search engine for phylogenetic tree databases