A phylogenetic supertree of oscine passerine birds (Aves: Passeri)

Oscine passerine birds make up almost half of all avian diversity. Relationships within the group, and its classification, have long been controversial. Over the last 10 years numerous molecular phylogenies have been published. We compiled source phylogenies from 99 published studies to construct an oscine supertree. We aimed to illustrate weak and strong parts of the phylogeny and set targets for future phylogenetic work and therefore preferred a heuristic approach where we judged the adequacy of taxon sampling and molecular method of each source tree instead of using matrices and automated tree-building programs. We present an estimate of the phylogenetic relationships of 1723 extant and one extinct species of oscine passerine birds (Aves: Passeri) - more than 37% of the total. We included 34/35 (97%) families, 38/39 (97%) subfamilies and 40/43 (93%) tribes. Overall resolution is 83% of a fully bifurcating tree. The basal lineages are all distributed in the Australo-Papuan region, but several more distal lineages dispersed out of this region and radiated in other parts of the world. However, taxa of the Australian region suffer from larger evolutionary gaps and the deep branches of the Sylvioidea and nine South American primaried oscines are still poorly resolved.