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A family tree for all things feathered
Monday November 05, 2012 10:46:11 AM,
IANS
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Sydney: An
international team of researchers has created the world's first
family tree describing the evolutionary history that links all
9,993 known living bird species.
This study, the culmination of five years of work by five
researchers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia, provides a
unique perspective on avian evolution and diversity.
The study used fossil data, DNA sequences, mathematics and
supercomputers to produce the family tree.
This was combined with their geographic distributions to examine
regional patterns in speciation (forming of a new species) with
surprising results, the journal Nature reports.
"When we originally tackled this problem, we expected to have the
family trees within a year or two. The further we progressed, the
more the enormity of our ambitious task became evident," said
mathematician Klaas Hartmann from the Institute for Marine and
Antarctic Science at the University of Tasmania.
However, the work has been worth it.
"Our results have uses that go far beyond understanding avian
speciation. I'm excited about using these results to guide
biodiversity conservation decisions," Hartmann added, according to
a Tasmania statement.
Sadly, this study shows that although the rate of speciation in
birds is increasing, it is overshadowed by the current rate of
human-induced extinctions.
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