Bird evolution: testing the Metaves clade with six new mitochondrial genomes
Date
2008-01-23
Authors
Morgan-Richards, Mary
Trewick, Steve A
Bartosch-Harlid, Anna
Kardailsky, Olga
Phillips, Matthew James
McLenachan, Patricia A
Penny, David
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BioMed Central
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Evolutionary biologists are often misled by convergence of morphology and this has
been common in the study of bird evolution. However, the use of molecular data sets have their
own problems and phylogenies based on short DNA sequences have the potential to mislead us
too. The relationships among clades and timing of the evolution of modern birds (Neoaves) has not
yet been well resolved. Evidence of convergence of morphology remain controversial. With six
new bird mitochondrial genomes (hummingbird, swift, kagu, rail, flamingo and grebe) we test the
proposed Metaves/Coronaves division within Neoaves and the parallel radiations in this primary
avian clade.
RESULTS: Our mitochondrial trees did not return the Metaves clade that had been proposed based
on one nuclear intron sequence. We suggest that the high number of indels within the seventh
intron of the β-fibrinogen gene at this phylogenetic level, which left a dataset with not a single site
across the alignment shared by all taxa, resulted in artifacts during analysis. With respect to the
overall avian tree, we find the flamingo and grebe are sister taxa and basal to the shorebirds
(Charadriiformes). Using a novel site-stripping technique for noise-reduction we found this
relationship to be stable. The hummingbird/swift clade is outside the large and very diverse group
of raptors, shore and sea birds. Unexpectedly the kagu is not closely related to the rail in our
analysis, but because neither the kagu nor the rail have close affinity to any taxa within this dataset
of 41 birds, their placement is not yet resolved.
CONCLUSION: Our phylogenetic hypothesis based on 41 avian mitochondrial genomes (13,229 bp)
rejects monophyly of seven Metaves species and we therefore conclude that the members of
Metaves do not share a common evolutionary history within the Neoaves.
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Keywords
Keywords: fibrinogen; article; artifact; bird; evolution; fowl; gene sequence; genome; intron; mitochondrion; noise reduction; nonhuman; nucleotide sequence; phylogeny; animal; classification; DNA sequence; genetics; insertion deletion mutation; mitochondrial genom
Citation
BMC Evolutionary Biology 8.20 (2008)
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BMC Evolutionary Biology
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Journal article
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