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Exhaustive family tree for birds shows recent, rapid diversification
- nine_k 14y agoTL;DR: the number of bird species was/is growing fast. This sharply contradicts the current theories which state that ecological niches fill up quickly, until a catastrophic event and mass extinction clears the space again. Birds seem to find more and more niches for distinct species without any catastrophes.
- tocomment 14y agoIs there anyway to see that graphic in a large, explorable format?
- gjuggler 14y agoThere's an associated website at http://birdtree.org/ http://birdtree.org/ . They don't seem to be providing the actual phylogenetic tree data (there's a cryptic note "More information will be made available here with the print publication of the study"), but there is a link to a higher-resolution PDF: http://litoria.eeb.yale.edu/bird-tree/images/BirdTreeHighRes3.pdf http://litoria.eeb.yale.edu/bird-tree/images/BirdTreeHighRes... You can also download the supplementary PDF at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nature11631-s1.pdf http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/na... which has a lot more detail and some pretty pictures towards the bottom.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoI wonder at the claim that the rate of speciation is increasing. It has to be a statistical argument; fossil evidence is sparse, while current bird species have been catalogued diligently. Sure, we've not a complete catalog, but much better than the fossil-historic one. So, its hard to calculate an accurate speciation-rate number for say 2 million years ago. We have little idea of how many species existed then; many may not be represented in the fossil record. Perhaps there were more species then; perhaps fewer.