Exhaustive family tree for birds shows recent, rapid diversification

news.yale.edu

10 points·tocomment··4 comments

I 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.

TL;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.

Is there anyway to see that graphic in a large, explorable format?

There's an associated website at 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/BirdTreeHighRes...

You can also download the supplementary PDF at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/na... which has a lot more detail and some pretty pictures towards the bottom.

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