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The global diversity of birds in space and time

TLDR
It is found that birds have undergone a strong increase in diversification rate from about 50 million years ago to the near present, with a number of significant rate increases, both within songbirds and within other young and mostly temperate radiations including the waterfowl, gulls and woodpeckers.
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LIKELIHOOD OF ANCESTOR STATES IN ADAPTIVE RADIATION

TLDR
It is concluded that measures of uncertainty are useful and should always be provided, despite simplistic assumptions about the probabilistic models that underlie them, and if uncertainty is too high, reconstruction should be abandoned.
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EARLY BURSTS OF BODY SIZE AND SHAPE EVOLUTION ARE RARE IN COMPARATIVE DATA

TLDR
It is suggested that the classical model of adaptive radiation, where morphological evolution is initially rapid and slows through time, may be rare in comparative data.
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Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere

TLDR
Evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence is reviewed, highlighting the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions.
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Inferring Evolutionary Process from Phylogenetic Tree Shape

  • A. MooersS. Heard
  • Biology, Environmental Science
    The Quarterly Review of Biology
  • 1 March 1997
TLDR
Tree shape may help us detect mass extinctions and adaptive radiations, measure continuos variation in speciation and extinction rates, and associate changes in these rates with ecological or biogeographical causes, and extend well beyond the study of macroevolution.
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Targeting global conservation funding to limit immediate biodiversity declines

TLDR
A global database of annual conservation spending is assembled and a statistical model is developed that explains 86% of variation in conservation expenditures, and this is used to identify countries where funding is robustly below expected levels.
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Global Distribution and Conservation of Evolutionary Distinctness in Birds

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Converting Endangered Species Categories to Probabilities of Extinction for Phylogenetic Conservation Prioritization

TLDR
It is shown that preserving the categories when converting such list designations to probabilities of extinction does not guarantee the stability of the resulting lists.
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A guide to phylogenetic metrics for conservation, community ecology and macroecology

  • C. TuckerM. Cadotte F. Mazel
  • Environmental Science, Biology
    Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical…
  • 20 January 2016
TLDR
Existing metrics in phylogenetic diversity metrics are organized by expanding on a unifying framework for phylogenetic information to improve the choice, application, and interpretation of phylo‐diversity metrics.
View on Wolters Kluwer (opens in a new tab)

Using Phylogenies to Test Macroevolutionary Hypotheses of Trait Evolution in Cranes (Gruinae)

TLDR
A novel phylogenetic approach to the study of trait evolution is presented, employing a method that avoids point estimates of ancestor reconstructions and considers a new nonhistorical model in which changes are completely independent of history, such that differences among species are expected to be the same, regardless of relationship.
View on U Chicago Press (opens in a new tab)
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