Transcriptome sequence-based phylogeny of birds

The relationships of the orders of modern birds (Neoaves) are difficult to resolve due to a rapid diversification after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. In particular, the position of Passeriformes (passerines), which comprises about 50% of all bird species including about 4,500 songbird species (suborder oscines of passerines) is an open question in avian phylogeny. Due to the large number of species, passerines play a central role in many research fields from ecology to conservation biology to neuroscience and cognition. Thus, their evolutionary relationship is the key to extend knowledge gained from passerines to other avian orders, to distinguish passerine evolutionary novelty, and to understand the evolutionary success of this order. We suggest that bioinformatics procedures based on non-coding sequences resolve deep and recent phylogenies with a single data set so that behaviors can be classified as single or multiple evolutionary events closely related.