BACKGROUND: Nearly one-quarter of all avian species is either threatened or nearly threatened. Of these, 73 species are currently being rescued from going extinct in wildlife sanctuaries. One of the previously most ...

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 Hedgehog (Hh) gene family codes for a class of secreted proteins composed of two active domains that act as signalling molecules during embryo development, namely for the development of the nervous and skeletal systems ...

Olfactory receptors (ORs) govern a prime sensory function. Extant birds have distinct olfactory abilities, but the molecular mechanisms underlining diversification and specialization remain mostly unknown. We explored OR ...

BACKGROUND: Vertebrate skin appendages are constructed of keratins produced by multigene families. Alpha (α) keratins are found in all vertebrates, while beta (β) keratins are found exclusively in reptiles and birds. We ...

BACKGROUND: Mammalian genomes commonly harbor endogenous viral elements. Due to a lack of comparable genome-scale sequence data, far less is known about endogenous viral elements in avian species, even though their small ...

BACKGROUND: The wide range of complex photic systems observed in birds exemplifies one of their key evolutionary adaptions, a well-developed visual system. However, genomic approaches have yet to be used to disentangle the ...

Mitchell et al. argue that divergence-time estimates for our avian phylogeny were too young because of an "inappropriate" maximum age constraint for the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and that, as a result, ...

To better determine the history of modern birds, we performed a genome-scale phylogenetic analysis of 48 species representing all orders of Neoaves using phylogenomic methods created to handle genome-scale data. We recovered ...