Evolution and diversity of passerine birds of Australasia

Passeriformes (passerines) is the largest and most diverse order of living birds, comprising over 50% of the world's avifauna. Because of their ubiquity, enormous diversity and exceptional plasticity, passerines represent an excellent vertebrate group for investigating a wide range of evolutionary, ecological and behavioural questions. However, these studies often require a well-resolved and robust phylogeny that incorporates not only morphological and molecular data, but also a broad sampling of modern and fossil taxa. The Australian fossil record is crucial to understanding the evolutionary history of passerines because much of their early evolution is presumed to have occurred in this region. However, the passerine fossil record is very scarce and poorly studied. Identifying passerine fossils is highly challenging both because of the large number of species (>5000) and because of the uniformity in their skeleton relative to other avian orders. This is problematic because phylogenetically informative characters are essential for identifying the systematic positions of fossils, resolving their relationships with living taxa, and understanding morphological evolution. This thesis addresses some of the shortcomings in our knowledge of passerine evolution and morphology. I describe pre-Quaternary (25 2.5 million years ago) fossil passerines from Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Queensland (Oligo-Miocene and Pliocene), and St Bathans, New Zealand (early Miocene). Many of the newly described fossils represent families previously unknown from these sites, and most are the oldest known representatives of extant passerine families. I present a comprehensive osteological database comprising novel and informative postcranial characters for the major modern groups of Australasian passerines. I employ these characters to infer the phylogenetic relationships of basal and higher-level taxa using maximum parsimony. I also use my osteological dataset to estimate the relationships of the Riversleigh passerines with living passerines. This dataset provides a useful resource for future research involving passerine morphology, including comparative, palaeontological and phylogenetic studies. Overall, the work presented here has considerably expanded our knowledge of the early history and diversity of the Australasian avifauna, shedding light on the evolution of the most widespread and diverse order of birds.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Nguyen, Jacqueline

• Morphology
• Passeriformes
• Songbird
• Phylogeny

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/2755

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/54458