As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 27 April 2018

Scientists to build the avian tree of life


PUBLIC RELEASE: 11-APR-2018

OpenWings project will provide open access data on more than 10,000 bird species

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

Birds are the only surviving descendants of dinosaurs. Birds also are used to study a large range of fundamental topics in biology from understanding the evolution of mating systems to learning about the genetic and environmental factors that affect their beautiful plumages.

Although birds are often studied by scientists and enjoyed by millions of birdwatchers, a complete description of the evolutionary relationships among all 10,560 bird species has not been possible. With the support of the National Science Foundation, scientists have embarked on a large-scale project to build the evolutionary tree of all bird species using cutting-edge technologies to collect DNA from across the genome. This project, called OpenWings, will produce the most complete evolutionary tree of any vertebrate group to-date. Because this research will take several years to complete, the project will also release data to the public as they are generated for use by any scientist, citizen or professional, for their own research.


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