Phylogenetic placement: Passeri: Passerides: Sylviida: Locustelloidea

Distribution: Africa and Madagascar, Eurasia, Wallacea, Australia and New Zealand

Number of extant genera: ~11

Number of extant species: ~68

References

Alström P, Ericson PGP, Olsson U, and Sundberg P (2006), Phylogeny and classification of the avian superfamily Sylvioidea, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 38, 381-397. (abstract) 

Alström P, Fregin S, Norman JA, Ericson PGP, Christidis L, and Olsson U (2011), Multilocus analysis of a taxonomically densely sampled dataset reveal extensive non-monomphyly in the avian family Locustellidae, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 58, 513-526. (abstract) 

Alström P, Xia C, Rasmussen PC, Olsson U, Dai B, Zhao J, Leader PJ, Carey GJ, Dong L, Cai T, Holt PI,  Le Manh H, Song G, Liu Y, Zhang Y, and Lei F (2015), Integrative taxonomy of the Russet Bush Warbler Locustella mandelli complex reveals a new species from central China, Avian Res. 6, e:9. (free pdf)

Alström P, Cibois A, Irestedt M, Zuccon D, Gelang M, Fjeldså J, Andersen MJ, Moyle RG, Pasquet E, and Olsson U (2018), Comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the grassbirds and allies (Locustellidae) reveals extensive non-momophyly of traditional genera, and a proposal for a new classification, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 127, 367-375. (abstract)

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. 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) 

Hosner PA, Boggess NC, Alviola P, Sánchez-González LA, Oliveros CH, Urriza R, and Moyle RG (2013), Phylogeography of the Robsonius ground-warblers (Passeriformes: Locustellidae) reveals an undescribed species from northeastern Luzon, Philippines, Condor 115, 630-639. (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)  

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)

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)