Some recent avian papers:
===
Anna G Phillips, Till TÃpfer, Katrin BÃhning-Gaese, Susanne A Fritz (2020)
Rates of ecomorphological trait evolution in passerine bird clades are independent of age.
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society: blz198 (advance online publication)
doi:
https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blz198https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/biolinnean/blz198/5710861Although the links between species richness and diversification rates with clade age have been studied extensively, few studies have investigated the relationship between the rates of trait evolution and clade age. The rate of morphological trait evolution has repeatedly been shown to vary through time, as expected, for example, for adaptive radiations, but the strength and sources of this variation are not well understood. We compare the relationship between the rates of trait evolution and clade age across eight monophyletic clades of passerine birds by investigating ecomorphological traits, i.e. morphological traits that influence the ecology of the species directly. We study the ecomorphological divergence pattern using analyses of the disparity through time and determine the best-fitting model of evolution for each trait in each clade. We find no support for a consistent dependence of evolutionary rates on clade age across wing, tail, tarsus and beak shape in our eight clades and also show that early burst models of trait evolution are rarely the best-fitting models within these clades. These results suggest that key innovations or adaptive radiations might be less common evolutionary patterns and processes than generally thought or might depend on the taxonomic level investigated.
=====
Free pdf:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02724634.2019.1697277?needAccess=trueAlthough the North Pacific has been a key area for investigations into seabird ecology and evolution, the seabird fossil record has been scarce on the western North Pacific. This study describes new seabird remains from the Pleistocene Kazusa and Shimosa groups, central Honshu Island, Japan, adding new insight into the Pleistocene seabird fauna in the region. Avian materials from four formations (the Hirayama, Ichijiku, and Mandano formations in the Kazusa Group and the Kiyokawa Formation in the Shimosa Group) include at least nine species of seabirds and other waterbirds: Melanitta fusca, Clangula hyemalis, Anatidae? gen. et sp. indet., Gavia stellata?, Phoebastria cf. albatrus, Puffinus cf. puffinus complex, Phalacrocoracidae gen. et sp. indet., Alle cf. alle, and Mancalla sp. Most of these occurrences represent the oldest records for the respective taxa in the western North Pacific. The occurrence of Alle from the Ichijiku Formation (â0.7 Ma) is especially noteworthy, because modern Alle alle, the sole recognized member of the genus, is rarely recorded in the Pacific today. This record suggests that in the middle Pleistocene, the taxon was probably more widespread in the North Pacific than it is today. Therefore, the present-day distribution of these seabirds is likely a relict of past ones, as has also been documented in some other seabird lineages.
===
Free pdf:
Among the macroevolutionary drivers of molecular evolutionary rates, metabolic demands and environmental energy have been a central topic of discussion. The large number of studies examining these associations have found mixed results, and have rarely explored the interactions among various factors impacting molecular evolutionary rates. Taking the diverse avian family Furnariidae as a case study, we examined the association between several estimates of molecular evolutionary rates with a proxy of metabolic demands imposed by flight (wing morphology) and proxies of environmental energy across the geographic ranges of species (temperature and UV radiation). We found a strong positive association between molecular rates in genomic regions that can change the coded amino-acid with wing morphology, environmental temperature, and UV radiation. Strikingly, however, we did not find evidence of such associations with molecular rates at sites not impacting amino-acids. Our results suggest that the demands of flight and environmental energy primarily impact genome evolution by placing selective constraints, instead of being associated with basal mutation rates.
====