Phylogenetic placement: Passeri: Passerides: Sylviida: Alaudoidea

Distribution: Old World, Wallacea and Australia

Number of extant genera: ~24

Number of extant species: ~102

References

Alström P, Mohammadi Z, Enbody ED, Irestedt M, Engelbrecht D, Crochet PA, Guillaumet A, Rancilhac L, Tieleman BI, Olsson U, Donald PF, and Stervander M (2023), Systematics of the avian family Alaudidae using multilocus and genomic data, Avian Res. 14, e:100095. (view pdf)

Alström P, Mohammadi Z, Donald PF, Nymark M, Enbody ED, Irestedt M, Barde Elisha E, Ndithia HK, Tieleman BI, Engelbrecht D, Olsson U, Rancilhac L, and Stervander M (2024), Integrative taxonomy reveals unrecognised species diversity in African Corypha larks (Aves: Alaudidae), Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 200, 1080-1108. (free pdf)

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) 

Moyle RG, Oliveros CH, Andersen MJ, Hosner PA, Benz BW, Manthey JD, Travers SL, Brown RM, and Faircloth BC (2016), Tectonic collision and uplift of Wallacea triggered the global songbird radiation, Nat. Commun. 7, e:12709. (free 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)

Stervander M, Hansson B, Olsson U, Hulme MF, Ottosson U, and Alström P (2020), Molecular species delimitation of larks (Aves: Alaudidae), and integrative taxonomy of the genus Calandrella, with the description of a range-restricted African relic taxon, Diversity 12, e:428. (free pdf)

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)