Following up on the songbird evolution item, it is possible to get a copy of the
galley proofs of the article from Les Christidis at the Victorian Museau -
The pdf is about 1Mb, so if you have a slow modem,
you might ask Les nicely for a word version of the main text.
I have appended the abstract.
------------------------------------------
A Gondwanan origin of passerine birds supported by DNA sequences of the endemic
New Zealand wrens
Per G.P. Ericson1, Les Christidis2, Alan Cooper3, Martin Irestedt1,4, Jennifer
Jackson3, Ulf S. Johansson1,4, and Janette A. Norman2
1 Department of Vertebrate Zoology and Molecular Systematics Laboratory, Swedish
Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 50007, SE-10405 Stockholm, Sweden
2 Sciences Department, Museum Victoria, P.O. Box 666E, Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia 3001
3 Zoology Department, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom
4 Department of Zoology, University of Stockholm, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Corresponding author: Per G.P. Ericson, Department of Vertebrate Zoology,
Swedish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 50007, SE-10405 Stockholm, Sweden.
Street address: Frescativagen 44. tel. +46 8 51954117, fax +46 8 51954212,
email
Summary
Zoogeographic, palaeontological and biochemical data support a southern
hemisphere origin for passerine birds, while accumulating molecular data
suggests that most extant avian orders originated in the mid-late Cretaceous. We
obtained DNA sequence data from the nuclear c-myc and RAG-1 genes of the major
passerine groups and demonstrate that the endemic New Zealand wrens
(Acanthisittidae) are the sister taxon to all other extant passerines,
supporting a Gondwanan origin and early radiation of passerines. We hypothesise
that the acanthisittids were isolated when New Zealand split off from Gondwana
ca. 82-85 Mya, suboscines in turn were derived from an ancestral lineage that
inhabited western Gondwana, and that the ancestors of the oscines (songbirds)
were subsequently isolated by the split of Australia from Antarctica. The later
spread of passerines into the Northern Hemisphere reflects the northward
migration of these former Gondwanan elements.
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