Molecular phylogeny of tyrant flycatchers, cotingas, manakins and their allies (Aves: Tyrannida)

Abstract: Tyrannida is a monophyletic clade that together with Furnariida constitutes the New World suboscines. The ca 560 species in Tyrannida are traditionally divided between three families: Tyrannidae (tyrant flycatchers), Cotingidae (cotingas) and Pipridae (manakins). They are most diverse in South America, where they make up roughly one third of the passerine diversity in most habitats. Constituting such a substantial part of South America’s avian diversity, they are of great importance for the understanding of South American biogeography, but also for studies of more general issues in evolutionary biology, e.g. patterns of adaptive radiation. However, their usefulness in such studies has been limited by the lack of a robust and well-resolved phylogeny for the group. Although three or four main lineages are universally recognized, phylogenetic relationships in the group are generally poorly understood and the affinities of a large number of genera are uncertain.The principal aim of this thesis is to reconstruct a well-resolved phylogenetic hypothesis for Tyrannida, which can serve as a platform for further studies of suboscine systematics and of broader issues in evolutionary biology. This has been achieved by employing comprehensive taxon sampling, DNA sequence data from multiple genes and model-based phylogenetic methods. The resulting phylogenies are generally well resolved and lend support to several earlier hypotheses of relationships in Tyrannida, but further clarify the basal divergences and show that all insectivorous groups form a monophyletic clade. Several novel relationships are revealed, most importantly that nearly all of the genera of debated affinities represent deep lineages in the insectivorous clade. Early evolution of Tyrannida took place in humid forest, and nearly all species tied to open habitats belong in a monophyletic clade that radiated in response to the cooling and drying climatic trend from the Mid Miocene and onwards.