Target enrichment of thousands of ultraconserved elements sheds new light on early relationships within New World sparrows (Aves: Passerellidae)

Sparrows in the nine-primaried oscine family Passerellidae represent an
attractive model for studying avian diversification across North and South
America. However, the lack of phylogenetic resolution at the base of the New
World sparrow tree has hampered the use of the existing sparrow phylogeny to
test questions about the evolution of sparrow traits. We generated phylogenomic
data from 1,063 ultraconserved elements to estimate phylogenetic relationships
among the major clades of New World sparrows. Concatenated and species tree
analyses of 271,830 base-pairs of sequence data converged on a well-supported phylogeny
that differs from previous estimates. The resolved backbone of the sparrow phylogeny
provides new insight into the biogeography of this radiation by suggesting both
a tumultuous biogeographic history with many colonizations of South America, as
well as several independent ecological transitions to different habitat types.

鸽形目九族雀科麻雀属的鸟类，作为研究北美和南美鸟类多样性的理想模型，具有极大的吸引力。然而，新大陆麻雀系统发育树的基序缺乏足够的系统发育分辨率，这阻碍了现有麻雀系统发育树在检验关于麻雀性状进化问题的应用。我们从1,063个高度保守元件中生成系统发育基因组数据，以估计新大陆麻雀主要类群之间的系统发育关系。对271,830个碱基对的序列数据进行拼接和物种树分析，得出一个得到充分支持的系统发育树，与之前的估计存在差异。麻雀系统发育树的解析主干为揭示这一辐射的生物地理学提供了新的见解，暗示了该地区经历了动荡的生物地理历史，多次南美洲的殖民化，以及多个独立的生态过渡到不同的生境类型。