Australaves is a recently defined
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...
of
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
s, consisting of the
Eufalconimorphae
Eufalconimorphae is a proposed clade of birds, consisting of passerines, parrots, falcons, caracaras, and forest falcons (but not other raptors). It has whole-genome DNA support.
The Eufalconimorphae is noted to produce aerodynamic force durin ...
(
passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...
s,
parrot
Parrots, also known as psittacines (), are birds of the roughly 398 species in 92 genera comprising the order Psittaciformes (), found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoide ...
s and
falcon
Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.
Adult falcons ...
s) as well as the
Cariamiformes
Cariamiformes (or Cariamae) is an order of primarily flightless birds that has existed for over 60 million years. The group includes the family Cariamidae (seriemas) and the extinct families Phorusrhacidae, Bathornithidae, Idiornithidae and A ...
(including
seriemas and the extinct "
terror bird
Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorous flightless birds that were one of the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal ...
s").
[Prum, R.O. ''et al''. (2015]
A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing
Nature 526, 569–573. They appear to be the
sister group
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree.
Definition
The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram:
Taxon A and ...
of
Afroaves
Afroaves is a clade of birds, consisting of the kingfishers and kin (Coraciiformes), woodpeckers and kin (Piciformes), hornbills and kin (Bucerotiformes), trogons (Trogoniformes), cuckoo roller ( Leptosomiformes), mousebirds ( Coliiformes), owl ...
.
[ As in the case of Afroaves, the most basal clades have predatory extant members, suggesting this was the ancestral lifestyle;]Darren Naish
Darren William Naish is a British vertebrate palaeontologist, author and science communicator.
As a researcher, he is best known for his work describing and reevaluating dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles, including '' Eotyrannus'', '' Xenop ...
are skeptical of this assessment, since some extinct representatives such as the herbivorous '' Strigogyps'' led other lifestyles. Basal parrots and falcons are at any rate vaguely crow
A crow is a bird of the genus '' Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. Crows are generally black in colour. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not pinned scientifica ...
-like and probably omnivorous.[L. D. Martin. 2010. Paleogene avifauna of the holarctic. Vertebrata PalAsiatica 48:367-374]
Cladogram
A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...
of Telluraves relationships based on Kuhl ''et al''. (2020) and Braun & Kimball (2021)[H Kuhl, C Frankl-Vilches, A Bakker, G Mayr, G Nikolaus, S T Boerno, S Klages, B Timmermann, M Gahr (2020]
An unbiased molecular approach using 3’UTRs resolves the avian family-level tree of life
''Molecular Biology and Evolution''. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaa191[Braun, E.L. & Kimball, R.T. (2021) Data types and the phylogeny of Neoaves. ''Birds'', 2(1), 1-22; https://doi.org/10.3390/birds2010001]
References
Neognathae
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