Researchers have mapped the evolution of all known bird species

An interdisciplinary research team has created the most comprehensive evolutionary tree of all known bird species, combining genetic data from 9,239 species from nearly 300 studies published between 1990 and 2024, and adding 1,000 additional controlled entries. The tree has been published in PNAS and integrated into the Open Tree of Life platform, which allows for dynamic updates with each new study.

Professor Emily Jane McTaish, of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, and her team described how they mapped the evolutionary relationships between all bird species, creating the most complete evolutionary tree published to date. “People love birds, and a lot of researchers publish papers about their evolutionary relationships,” says McTaish. “We linked all the data together so it was in one place, accessible and reliable.”

To construct the comprehensive phylogeny tree, the researchers combined data from hundreds of papers and supplemented it with controlled records of species that had not been genetically examined before. The resulting dataset is designed to be easily shared and continuously updated with new publications.

The methodology and findings are detailed in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers note that this method is suitable not only for studying bird evolution, but could serve as keys to a similar shift in the study of other animal and plant groups.

The project began about four years ago, when Elliot Miller of the Cornell Lab approached McTaish, who had been working on software designed to integrate phylogenetic trees as part of the Open Tree of Life project. “Our research will help complete the research, so that the findings of all the studies can be optimally integrated into the follow-up work,” Miller said.

Although McTawees and Miller had never met before, they found a comfortable partnership: “Elliott is passionate about birds and the lab develops apps like Merlin and eBird. I, for my part, developed software for merging evolutionary trees – that’s how an optimal combination was created,” McTawees explained.

Open Tree of Life operates on a “wiki” model that allows evolutionary biologists and taxonomists to manually upload and update information on the relationships between species, and now also automatically with the publication of new genetic data.

Over the past two years, with more than 2.5 million species represented and advances in genetic sequencing technologies, McTawees and her colleagues have written a system that automatically tracks and updates the tree of life as new information is added. The inclusion of the avian species synthesis closes a key gap in the project and brings the Open Tree of Life closer to a full understanding of biological evolution.

According to McTaish, the support of the National Science Foundation was the basis for data collection and interdisciplinary collaboration: “It is a model of open science and global collaboration that made this project possible,” she concluded.