Oct. 31, 2012 A Yale-led scientific team has produced the most
comprehensive family tree for birds to date, connecting all
living bird species -- nearly 10,000 in total -- and revealing
surprising new details about their evolutionary history and its
geographic context. Analysis of the family tree shows when and
where birds diversified -- and that birds' diversification rate
has increased over the last 50 million years, challenging the
conventional wisdom of biodiversity experts. "It's the first
time that we have -- for such a large group of species and with
such a high degree of confidence -- the full global picture of
diversification in time and space," said biologist Walter Jetz
of Yale, lead author of the team's research paper, published
Oct. 31 online in the journal Nature. He continued: "The
research highlights how heterogeneously fast diversifying
species groups are distributed throughout the family tree and
over geographic space. Many parts of the globe have seen a
variety of species groups diversify r