Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Strong Support

Here is strong support for what I am proposing:
http://www.owlpages.info/downloads/A_Phylogenomic_Study_of_Birds_Reveals_Their_Evolutionary_History.pdf

"Modern birds occupy a wide diversity of
niches and exhibit a variety of behaviors. The
broad structure of our phylogeny suggested diversification
along general ecological divisions,
such as water birds, shorebirds, and land birds.
However, adaptations to these environments clearly
arose multiple times, because many aquatic birds were not part of the water bird clade (e.g.,
tropicbirds, flamingos, and grebes) and terrestrial
birds were found outside of the land bird clade
(e.g., turacos, doves, sandgrouse, and cuckoos).
Our phylogeny also indicated several distinctive
niches, such as nocturnal (owls, nightjars, and
allies), raptorial (falcons, hawks, eagles, New
World vultures, seriema, and owls), or pelagic
(tubenosed birds, frigatebirds, and tropicbirds)
lifestyles, have evolved multiple times."

Taking this a little further, the birds listed in green are from the landbird line.
The birds listed in gold are in two different lines. Some (Charadriiformes/Charadrii) are in the wader line and the others (Charadriiformes/Lari) are in the seabird line.
The birds in blue come from the seabird line.
The birds in red are in two different lines. Some are in the waterbird line and the others are in the landfowl line.

2 comments:

  1. How does this support your theory at all?

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  2. As you probably realize, what I am presenting includes a development from pterosaurs to primitive birds and a development from primitive birds to modern birds.
    The idea of the major branches and the subbranches fleshes out the details of the development ffom primitive birds to modern birds.

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