Re: Multiple losses of flight in ratites?

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

Wow. Cool. Cannot wait to read the paper.

> Although the authors are probably correct in their reasoning, it does seem 
> a little circular.  If there were birds that regained flight from a 
> flightless ancestor, would we necessarily recognize them as such?  Or 
> would we just assume that if a given lineage of birds includes more than 
> one flightless species separated by at least one flighted species then 
> it's always the result of multiple losses of flight?

Geography certainly helps. The most drastic example is that all those 
flightless rails (most of them inside *Gallirallus*, AFAIK) occur on oceanic 
islands that lie way beyond what any flightless nonmarine mammal (save us 
and our accompanying fauna, obviously) has ever reached.