Posted on 05/09/2025 10:42:39 AM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers merged genetic data from 9,239 bird species (from nearly 300 studies) plus 1,000 curated entries to build a complete, shareable evolutionary tree. Published in PNAS and integrated into the Open Tree of Life platform, this dynamic database can be continuously updated as new research emerges and serves as a blueprint for mapping other groups of organisms. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
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A research team has created a comprehensive evolutionary tree of all bird species, integrating data from hundreds of studies into the Open Tree of Life, a project that continuously updates with new genomic insights.
Professor Emily Jane McTavish and her team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have successfully mapped the evolutionary relationships of every known bird species. This ambitious project has resulted in the most complete bird evolutionary tree to date.
To build this comprehensive phylogenetic tree, the researchers integrated data on 9,239 bird species from nearly 300 scientific studies published between 1990 and 2024. They supplemented this with curated information on an additional 1,000 species. The resulting dataset is designed for easy sharing and continuous updates as new research becomes available.
“People love birds, and a lot of people work on birds. People publish scientific papers about birds’ evolutionary relationships all the time,” McTavish said. “We synthesized all the data to have unified information all in one place.”
The methodology and findings are detailed in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the authors, this synthesized evolutionary tree has broad potential applications for studying bird evolution and ecology. Moreover, the approach used to build the tree can be adapted to study other groups of animals and plants.
The project started about four years ago when Eliot Miller, then with the Cornell lab, reached out to McTavish, who has been working on software for the Open Tree of Life (OpenTree) project for about a decade.
“Many dozens of bird phylogenies (studies of evolutionary histories using genetics) get published every year, yet their findings — with implications for everything from taxonomy to our understanding of ancestral characters — aren’t necessarily being used for downstream research,” Miller said. “Our project should help to close this research loop so that these studies and their findings are better incorporated into follow-up research.”
Collaboration Through Shared Passion
McTavish said that though she hadn’t met Miller before he asked her to collaborate, this project dovetailed perfectly with her continuing work.
“Eliot is really into birds, and the lab is full of bird experts, and they also develop birding apps such as Merlin and Ebird, so that was their side of it, and I’ve been working on this software to combine evolutionary trees, so that was my side of it,” she explained.
OpenTree is a collaborative project that brings together evolutionary biologists and taxonomy experts to build an accurate, comprehensive evolutionary tree that describes how every named species on Earth is related to every other. It works on a wiki-like model, allowing users to manually upload data to update the tree’s evolutionary relationships.
McTavish explained that as new understandings of relationships emerge, users can add that information to the Tree of Life to ensure that it reflects the most current understanding of evolutionary relationships between species.
Continual Updates in a Growing Tree of Life
With more than 2.5 million species now represented in the Open Tree of Life — and new data constantly streaming in thanks to advances in genome sequencing — McTavish, a biologist with the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences in the School of Natural Sciences, and a collaborator have been writing software that automatically updates the tree as data emerges.
She said the bird species synthesis fills one more gap in the Open Tree.
Like the new study, the Open Tree project is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, which McTavish said has been crucial for establishing collaborations, gathering data from hundreds of published authors, and sharing information across disciplines and institutions.
“This open science and collaborative environment really made this possible,” she said.
Reference:
“A complete and dynamic tree of birds”
by Emily Jane McTavish, Jeff A. Gerbracht, Mark T. Holder, Marshall J. Iliff, Denis Lepage, Pamela C. Rasmussen, Benjamin D. Redelings, Luna L. Sánchez Reyes and Eliot T. Miller, 29 April 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2409658122
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Thank you very much and God bless you.
Let’s all sing line birdies sing!
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!...............
Fantastic.
I can just imagine the amount of renaming to come. The trend is making hash of plant naming. Every time a new model comes out, they get do it all over again. That way, nobody will know what is what without an “expert.” Meanwhile, the people who USE biological names will need a concordance just to talk about them.
I haven’t heard about this.
But when you go carrying
pictures of Chairman Mao
Ain’t nobody gonna listen
to you anyhow.....🎶🎶🎶🎶
Somewhat off-topic, but ‘Global Big Day’ is tomorrow:
https://ebird.org/globalbigday
(There’s also an informal ‘Big Year’ competition about which a funny movie was made):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Year
Interesting. Would be fascinating to see what parts of the genomes have to be present and conserved in all bird species.
I imagine the hoatzin is at or near the root of this genetic tree.
Do they map the birds back to amoebas?
Hey that’s a great idea for a moneymaker. Create a series of cards of the world’s most consequential communists. Have the picture on one side and their biography on the flip side ( must include the number of people they had murdered). Every Democrat will demand to own a set.
The two most beloved species are chickens and turkeys.
Considering that nothing has ever “evolved” as far as science can actually prove, this is quite a feat...
Hehehe 🤣
They missed a couple thousand species.
Seems like bad time for Researchers to proclaim they have solved their mystery to the Nth degree and now need a new quest i.e. funding.
Malo practically committed genocide against sparrows.
Bovine Excrement. Laughable on it’s face.
(Researchers merged genetic data from 9,239 bird species)
Proof that Dinosaurs coexist with us.
“ They missed a couple thousand species”
I didn’t see any info for the Auger billed clam sucker.
“ Considering that nothing has ever “evolved” as far as science can actually prove, this is quite a feat...”
Evolution is inferred and essentially a euphemism.
What is mapped are chemical similarities.
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