Biogeographic history of tits and chickadees

Summary

Tits and chickadees is a well-known group of bird that contains approximately 60 species. They are distributed across Eurasia, North America and Africa, and are represented in a wide range of habitats from tropical rain forest and savannas to boreal taiga. The group is most diverse in the Sino-Himalayan region and biogeographic analyses indicate that the group also originated in this region. One of the aims of this project is to track the dispersion history of the parids from this region to other parts of the world and in particular identify the large scale changes in habitat association.

Project Participants at NRM

Ulf Johansson (Principal investigator)

Publications

Johansson, U.S., Nylinder, S., Ohlson, J.I, and Tietze, D.T (in press) Reconstruction of the Late Miocene Biogeographic History of Tits and Chickadees (Aves: Passeriformes: Paridae) – a Comparison between Discrete Area Analyses and Probabilistic Diffusion Approach. Journal of Biogeography

Johansson, U.S., Ekman, J., Bowie, R.C.K., Halvarsson, P., Ohlson, J.I., Price, T.D. and Ericson, P.G.P. (2013). A complete multilocus species phylogeny of the tits and chickadees (Aves: Paridae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 69, 852–860.