The origin, distribution, and function of biological diversity are fundamental themes of
ecology and evolutionary biology. Research on birds has played a major role in the history …

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been the workhorse of research in phylogeography for
almost two decades. However, concerns with basing evolutionary interpretations on mtDNA …

The advent and maturation of algorithms for estimating species trees—phylogenetic trees
that allow gene tree heterogeneity and whose tips represent lineages, populations and …

Estimates of the incidence of major classes of parental care by birds are drawn from
classical studies that preceded both the publication of a massive secondary literature and …

Charles Darwin's experiences in the Galápagos Islands in 1835 helped to guide his
thoughts toward a revolutionary theory: that species were not fixed but diversified from their …

Species are the fundamental units of biology, ecology and conservation, and progress in
these fields is therefore hampered by widespread taxonomic bias and uncertainty …

Culture (behaviour based on socially transmitted information) is present in diverse animal
species, yet how it interacts with genetic evolution remains largely unexplored. Here, we …

Publisher Summary This chapter outlines the evolution of geographic variation in birdsong.
Studies of vocal signals in birds offer potentially useful opportunities for empirical tests of the …

With increasing force, genetic divergence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is being argued as
the primary tool for discovery of animal species. Two thresholds of single-gene divergence …

Emerging large-scale datasets coupled with statistical advances have provided new insights
into the processes that generate the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG). But many of these …