Re: Thoughts on the biggest morphological bird analysis

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> I take a very different view.  I don't think it's quite correct to assume
> that when a morphology-based analysis disagrees with a molecule-based
> analysis that the former is at fault.  Both kinds of analyses 
> (morphological
> vs molecular) have problems with homoplasy.

Of course, but when different genes say the same thing, without an 
identifiable selection pressure that could work on them all (like base 
composition bias), I'll trust large molecular analyses over fossil-less or 
otherwise too small morphological analyses any day of the week. Thus, a 
bat-colugo clade is clearly out of the question, and a loon-grebe clade 
looks unlikely -- here we have only three molecular analyses so far, but we 
have Mayr's (admittedly small) morphological analysis that includes the 
extinct flamingo diversity and *Juncitarsus*, while Livezey & Zusi only use 
extant taxa in that part of the tree.