Symposium number: 26

Title: NEW APPROACHES, NEW DATA, AND NEW FINDINGS IN AVIAN PHYLOGENY AT AND ABOVE THE ORDINAL LEVEL

Principal organizer: Shannon Hackett
Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, USA
email: shackett@fieldmuseum.org

Second organizer: Gerald Mayr
Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Division of Ornithology, Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325 Frankfurt/M, Germany

First keynote speaker: John Harshman
Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, USA
Title of first keynote paper: Early Bird, an international collaboration in deep molecular phylogenetics of birds: can assault by masses of DNA sequences and sampled species breach the wall of death?

Second keynote speaker: Gerald Mayr
Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Division of Ornithology, Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325 Frankfurt/M, Germany
Title of second keynote paper: The renaissance of avian paleontology and its bearing on the higher-level phylogeny of birds: are there morphological links between modern higher-level taxa?

Contributed talks

Symposium description: Despite the vast natural history and ecological data on birds and their importance in the development of evolutionary and ecological biology, ornithologists are just beginning the task of determining comprehensive phylogenetic relationships. A well-supported and well-resolved phylogeny will allow avian biologists to address questions in ecology, evolution, physiology, and behavior by using the phylogeny as a comparative framework. Current knowledge of higher-level avian phylogeny is determined more by what we don't know than what we do. Although a few superordinal groups are well-supported, for example the Paleognathae, Neognathae, Galloanseres, Neoaves and the Phoenicopteriformes - Podicipediformes lineage, most other reliable phyletic nodes in non-passerines comprise pairs of closely-related families (e.g. Casuariidae and Dromaiidae). Thus the deep structure of the avian tree remains largely unknown.
The goals of the symposium are to canvass the new approaches being used to address this major phylogenetic problem, and to report on the results of new data and new analyses using a broad range of sources: molecular and morphological, neontological and paleontological.

back to list of symposia

Home | Scientific Programme | Officers | Venue | Accommodation | Tours | Past Congresses