AI tool helps explain how perching birds became so diverse
Researchers used a new AI tool called Skelevision to analyze over 170,000 skeletal measurements from perching birds. The study reveals that bird body shapes evolved in sudden bursts linked to historical climate upheaval.
Why it matters
This research demonstrates how AI can accelerate biological discovery by digitizing massive museum archives that would otherwise take decades to process.
Perching birds evolved their body shapes in rare, sudden bursts that lined up with moments of upheaval in Earth’s climate. A new study reconstructs about 50 million years of change in their skeletons. Most of that change was packed into a handful of brief episodes, not spread evenly across time.
The same signal shows up in where these birds live today. Species in cold, strongly seasonal regions near the poles evolve faster than their relatives near the equator. That hints at climate turmoil acting as a repeated engine of new body forms.
The birds are passerines – the order of perching birds that includes sparrows, finches, warblers and crows. More than half of all living bird species belong to this single group. That sheer abundance makes it a natural place to study how body plans arise and change over long stretches of time.
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