Phylogenetic placement: Passeri: Passerides: Sylviida: Aegithaloidea

Distribution: Eurasia and western North America

Number of extant genera: 3

Number of extant species: ~15

References

Barker FK, Barrowclough GF, and Groth JG (2002), A phylogenetic hypothesis for passerine birds: taxonomic and biogeographic implications of an analysis of nuclear DNA sequence data, Proc. R. Soc. B 269, 295-308 (abstract)

Barker FK, Cibois A, Schikler P, Feinstein J, and Cracraft J (2004), Phylogeny and diversification of the largest avian radiation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci U.S.A. 101, 11040-45. (pdf)

Ericson PGP, Klopfstein S, Irestedt M, Nguyen JMT, and Nylander JAA (2014), Dating the diversification of the major lineages of Passeriformes (Aves), BMC Ecol. Evol. 14, e:8. (free pdf)

Johansson US, Ericson PGP, Fjeldsa J, and Irestedt M (2016), The phylogenetic position of the world's smallest passerine, the Pygmy Bushtit Psaltria exilis, Ibis 158, 519-529. (abstract)

Kuhl H, Frankl-Vilches C, Bakker A, Mayr G, Nikolaus G, Boerno ST, Klages S, Timmermann B, and Gahr M (2021), An unbiased molecular approach using 3'UTRs resolves the avian family-level tree of life, Mol. Biol. Evol. 38, 108-127. (free pdf)  

Lovette IJ, and Bermignham E (2000), C-mos variation in songbirds: molecular evolution, phylogenetic implications, and comparisons with mitochondrial differentiation, Mol. Biol. Evol. 17, 1569-1577. (pdf)

Oliveros CH, Field DJ, Ksepka DT, Barker KF, Aleixo A, Andersen MJ, Alström P, Benz BW, Braun EL, Braun MJ, Bravo GA, Brumfield RT, Chesser RT, Claramunt S, Cracraft J, Cuervo AM, Derryberry EP, Glenn TC, Harvey MG, Hosner PA, Joseph L, Kimball RT, Mack AL, Miskelly CM, Peterson AT, Robbins MB, Sheldon FH, Silveira LF, Smith BT, White ND, Moyle RG, and Faircloth BC (2019), Earth history and the passerine superradiation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 116, 7915-25. (pdf)

Päckert M, Martens J, and Sun YH (2010), Phylogeny of long-tailed tits and allies inferred from mitochondrial and nuclear markers (Aves: Passeriformes, Aegithalidae), Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 55, 952-967. (abstract)

Stiller J, Feng S, Chowdhury AA, Rivas-González I, Duchêne DA, Fang Q, Deng Y, Kozlov A, Stamatakis A, Claramunt S, Nguyen JMT, Ho SYW, Faircloth BC, Haag J, Houde P, Cracraft J, Balaban M, Mai U, Chen G, Gao R, Zhou C, Xie Y, Huang Z, Cao Z, Yan Z, Ogilvie HA, Nakhleh L, Lindow B, Morel B, Fjeldså J, Hosner PA, da Fonseca RR, Petersen B, Tobias JA, Székely T, Kennedy JD, Reeve AH, Liker A, Stervander M, Antunes A, Tietze DT, Bertelsen M, Lei F, Rahbek C, Graves GR, Schierup MH, Warnow T, Braun EL, Gilbert MTP, Jarvis ED, Mirarab S, and Zhang G (2024), Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes, Nature (preview pdf)