Phylogeny

Traditional avian phylogeny relied heavily on morphological similarity, but molecular phylogenetics using whole-genome sequencing has overturned many long-standing relationships. The Jarvis et al. (2014) genome-scale analysis revealed that flamingos are the closest living relatives of doves, falcons are closer to parrots than to other raptors, and sunbirds are not related to hummingbirds despite superficial resemblance. These findings demonstrate how convergent evolution can mislead morphology-based classification.