Shake Up in Bird World

As some of you know, I'm something of an amateur birder - with emphasis on "amateur", not because I don't get paid to bird - few do - but because I devote much less time to this hobby than most birders. That said, I found this interesting. I first read about the big shake up in the bird world via the MOU listserv. They linked to an article. Here's a quote from, and link to, the ScienceDaily article:

Birds are among the most studied and loved animals, and much of what we know about animal biology -- from natural history to ecology, speciation, reproduction, etc. -- is based on birds. Nevertheless, the avian tree-of-life has remained controversial and elusive -- until now.

For more than five years, the Early Bird Assembling the Tree-of-Life Research Project, centered at The Field Museum, has been examining DNA from all major living groups of birds. Thus far, scientists have built and analyzed a dataset of more than 32 kilobases of nuclear DNA sequences from 19 different locations on the DNA of each of 169 bird species. The results of this massive research, which is equivalent to a small genome project, will be published in Science on June 27, 2008.

More here at grrl scientist:

And here's another surprise; falcons are the sister group to the parrots and songbirds. Further, the falcons (Falconidae) include the New World vultures -- but they are not closely related to eagles, hawks and osprey (Accipitridae), as previously thought.

Hattip on grrl scientist piece from the BirdChick.