For Immediate Release Media contact: The Field Museum Nancy O'Shea 312/665-7100 media@fieldmuseum.org Huge genome-scale phylogenetic study of birds rewrites evolutionary tree-of-life An international, multi-institution research project shows that when it comes to bird evolution, appearances can be deceiving CHICAGO—The largest ever study of bird genetics has not only shaken up but completely redrawn the avian evolutionary tree. The study challenges current classifications, alters our understanding of avian evolution, and provides a valuable resource for phylogenetic and comparative studies in birds. Birds are among the most studied and loved animals, and much of what we know about animal biology—from natural history to ecology, speciation, reproduction, etc.—is based on birds. Nevertheless, the avian tree-of-life has remained controversial and elusive—until now. For more than five years, the Early Bird Project, centered at The Field Museum, has been examining DNA from all major living groups of birds. Early Bird is funded by the National Science Foundations’ Assembling the Tree-of-Life Research Program. Thus far, scientists have built and analyzed a dataset of more than 32 kilobases of nuclear DNA sequences from 19 different locations on the DNA of each of 169 bird species. The results of this massive research, which is equivalent to a small genome project, will be published in Science on June 27, 2008. “Our study and the remarkable new understanding of the evolutionary relationships of birds that it affords was possible only because of the technological advances of the last few years that have enabled us to sample larger portions of genomes,” said Shannon Hackett, one of three lead authors and associate curator of birds at The Field Museum. “Our study yielded robust results and illustrates the power of collecting genome-scale data to reconstruct difficult evolutionary trees.” Continue >>