Phylogenetic placement: Passeri: Passerides: Picathartoidea

Distribution: tropical Africa

Number of extant genera: 1 (monotypic)

Number of extant species: 2

References

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)

Beresford P, Barker FK, Ryan PG, and Crowe TM (2005), African endemics span the tree of songbirds (Passeri): molecular systematics of several evolutionary “enigmas”, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 272, 849-858. (abstract)

Irestedt M, and Ohlson JI (2008), The division of the major songbird radiation into Passerida and 'core Corvoidea' (Aves: Passeriformes) – the species tree vs. gene trees, Zool. Scr. 37, 305-313. (abstract)

Jønsson KA, Fabre PH, Rickelfs RE, and Fjeldså J (2011), Major global radiation of corvoid birds originated in the proto-Papuan archipelago, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 108, 2328-33. (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. (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)

Treplin S, and Tiedemann R (2007), Specific chicken repeat 1 (CR1) retrotransposon insertion suggests phylogenetic affinity of rockfowls (genus Picathartes) to crows and ravens (Corvidae), Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 43, 328-337. (abstract)

Treplin S, Siegert R, Bleidorn C, Thompson HS, Fotso R, and Tiedemann R (2008), Molecular phylogeny of songbirds (Aves: Passeriformes) and the relative utility of common nuclear marker loci, Cladistics 24, 328-349. (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)