Phylogenetic placement: Passeri: Climacterida

Distribution: Australia and New Guinea

Number of extant genera: ~7

Number of extant species: ~29

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. 101, 11040-45. (pdf)

Christidis L, Norman J, Scott I, and Westerman M (1996), Molecular perspectives on the phylogenetic affinities of lyrebirds (Menuridae) and treecreepers (Climacteridae), Aust. J. Zool. 44, 215-222. (abstract)

Ericson PGP, Christidis L, Irestedt M, and Norman JA (2002), Systematic affinities of the lyrebirds (Passeriformes: Menura), with a novel classification of the major groups of passerine birds, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 25, 53-62. (abstract)

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) 

Ericson PGP, Irestedt M, Nylander JAA, Christidis L, Joseph L, and Qu Y (2020), Parallel evolution of bower-building behavior in two groups of bowerbirds suggested by phylogenomics, Syst. Biol. 69, 820-829. (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)