Abstract

Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. The avian genome is principally characterized by its constrained size, which predominantly arose because of lineage-specific erosion of repetitive elements, large segmental deletions, and gene loss. Avian genomes furthermore show a remarkably high degree of evolutionary stasis at the levels of nucleotide sequence, gene synteny, and chromosomal structure. Despite this pattern of conservation, we detected many non-neutral evolutionary changes in protein-coding genes and noncoding regions. These analyses reveal that pan-avian genomic diversity covaries with adaptations to different lifestyles and convergent evolution of traits.

Published in

Science
2014, Volume: 346, number: 6215, pages: 1311-1320
Publisher: AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

SLU Authors

• Håstad, Olle

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Alström, Per

  • SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences

UKÄ Subject classification

Biological Systematics
Zoology
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1251385

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/65087