iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 12/01/2026

It's 5y since my greatest scientific breakthrough was published w the great @dhaelewa.bsky.social in OFOAJ! It truly marks a paradigm shift! 🤣 Need a break from the world? Read about fishy #birds + fungi + pizza at doi.org/10.19080/OFO... — and background at tinyurl.com/4ayknbty! 🪶🧪🐦🐟🍄‍🟫 #Scam

Figure 1 from Stervander & Haelewaters (2020). It is ... undescribable ... because it does not make sense, since the paper is a scam to reveal predatory "scientific" publishers. Suffice to say, there are birbs, fish, mushrooms, and pizza in there, and it's oh so significant.

An actual "peer review report" from a journal on our paper. It reads:

"1. The paper is well written and discussed about the innovative work about the species.
2. And also discussed about the traditionally bird- like morphology and inter-class taxonomic relationship.
3. The new thing has been discussed like some birds are more morphological similar to fish than others
4. The paper can be published in your journal."

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 27/11/2025

#Thanksgiving 🦃 with our amazing volunteers in the bird collections of National Museums Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿! 😉 Do you live nearby and would like to join? We're capturing data from all our #birds. Well, now's your chance! Don't wait... careers.nms.ac.uk/job/800113 #museum #ornithology 🪶

Shawn, Allan, Rosie, and a Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 07/10/2025

I've been silent a while, as I've struggled to keep up with *most* things, due to accumulated stress from hubby's 5-month unemployment, teenager+school+drama, challenging relatives & whatnot. #Birding gives me relief when #MentalHealth is so-so: recent Sabine's Gull (Xema sabini) = golden band-aid!

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 12/08/2025

Join us as Assistant #Curator of Vertebrates @ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿NMS! Large collections of #birds & #mammals + very active specimen prep = cool place! The ad doesn't say, but I say there's a good chance of prolongation beyond 1y. Hurry up and apply/spread the word: careers.nms.ac.uk/job/748553! 🪶🧪 #museumjobs #job

Yours truly and our mounted Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) specimen

The bird collection store, busy with visiting researchers, mounts, and in the background our volunteers who capture data from the specimen labels. It's not always this packed, but we do have a fair number of volunteers and visitors.

Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in trays in the cabinets. The collections spaces are pretty new, fresh, and functional, which is not always the case for museum collections...

A tray of African raptor eggs to illustrate the breadth of the bird collection, which holds som 70K skin specimens, 60K egg clutches, and 10K skeletons.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

Finally, I must shout out to the journal Avian Systematics and EiC Trevor Worthy + wizard Steven Gregory. I've learned tons about nomenclature in the revisions and edits and the process has been fast and good. No fees + Open Access, the journal just moved to www.avespress.com/avian-system....

The cover of Volume 1 of Avian Systematics, now published (continuously) by Aves Press.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

I ran this side project for @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social & @nhm-london.bsky.social w great collabs: Gerald Mayr (Dr Bones & Rapid-write) and Chen Guangji & Feng Shaohong (of #B10K #Bird10K, saving the day when supposedly public data was not so public). Special thx to Piotr Gryz for cave rail pic!

Illustrating Bird10K by reusing my old collage of Elementaves bird species, arranged following the classical elements, from bottom to top, of water, earth, air, and fire. All images with CC0 license, unless otherwise stated. Water: Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), Common Loon (Gavia immer). Earth: Indian Nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus) [Hari K Patibanda, https://flic.kr/p/2oM6rs3, CC BY-NC 2.0], Tasmanian Nativehen (Tribonyx mortierii). Air: Common Swift (Apus apus), Stripe-tailed Hummingbird (Eupherusa eximia). Fire: Sunbittern (Eurypygia helias) [Jean Ogden, https://flic.kr/p/2puQRv2, CC BY 2.0], White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon lepturus).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

...so we described Nesotrochidae fam. nov., the cave rail family! They are (were) distinguished by a number of osteological characters, not least that the humerus has a large and ventrally protruding processus flexorius. Voilá: Nesotrochidae Stervander, Chen, Feng & Mayr, 2025!

Figure 3 of Stervander et al. (2025): https://www.avespress.com/uploads/downloads/212/file/AS_2_8_PDFA.pdf.

Here, the one and only Gerald Mayr describes the differences in bone morphology between cave rails, rails, flufftails, and sun grebes (Heliornithidae).

Figure caption: Humeri (A‒E, cranial view), tarsometatarsi (F‒H, dorsal view), and hypotarsi (I‒M, proximal view) of the Rallidae (A, F, I), Heliornithidae (B, J), Sarothruridae (C, K), Nesotrochidae, fam. nov. (D, G, L), and Aptornithidae (E, H, M). A, Aramides cajanea (right side); F, I, Aramides saracura (right side); B, J, Heliornis fulica (all left side); C, K, Sarothrura pulchra (C: right side, K: left side); D, G, L, Nesotrochis steganinos (from Olson, 1974: figs. 1 and 2; D: left side, G, L: right side); E, H, M, Aptornis defossor (all right side). Abbreviations: fdl, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor digitorum longus; fhl, sulcus for tendon of musculus flexor hallucis longus; fp2, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor perforatus digiti II; fpp2, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor perforans et perforatus digiti II; flx, processus flexorius. The scale bars equal 10 mm in A‒H and 5 mm in I‒M; the scale bars for N. steganinos are approximate and based on measurements given by Olson (1974).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

This fully supported topology presents three options: merge family Aptornithidae (adzebills) with (1) Nesotrochis or (2) that + current family Sarothruridae (flufftails)—or (3) award the cave rails family status as Nesotrochidae. #1–2 seem unreasonable given the marked distinctness of adzebills...

Artistic rendition of an adzebill from New Zealand, by Nobu Tamura, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aptornis_BW.jpg under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). These beasts are markedly different from flufftails and forest rails as well as cave rails.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

Dated Bayesian analyses of 9,615 base pairs coding mitochondrial sequence, in 16 partitions w optimised substitution models, didn't result in the unresolved polytomy of Oswald et al. (2021). Neither was Nesotrochis sister with Sarothruridae, but split as sister from Aptornithidae 37 Mya!

Phylogenetic tree from Figure 2 of Stervander et al (2025): /https://www.avespress.com/uploads/downloads/212/file/AS_2_8_PDFA.pdf.

Caption: Dated phylogeny based on 9,615 base pairs mitochondrial DNA across Gruiformes, with charadriiform outgroups (in grey). With full posterior probability (PP = 1.0), the Cuban cave rail Nesotrochis steganinos Olson, 1974 is the sister taxon of the adzebill family Aptornithidae Bonaparte, 1856, from which it diverged 36.7 Ma. Their most recent common ancestor diverged from the flufftail family Sarothruridae Verheyen, 1957 at 42.9 Ma. Some key nodes are annotated tip-side of the node with the estimated and the 95% highest posterior density for divergence time. Nodes used for time calibrations are marked with asterisks and the calibration density distributions coloured in peach. All nodes shown have PP = 1.0 except one within Sarothruridae labelled with the PP value in bold italics on the root-side of the node. In the geological time scale, Pli = Pliocene, Ple = Pleistocene. Clade colours correspond to Figure 1 and Oswald et al. (2021). This tree is based on a single BEAST run comprising 100 million generations, with 13% burn-in and mean node heights. For other trees, see Data Availability.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

—so we generated new mitogenomes for Madagascar Forest Rail (Mentocrex kioloides) and Forbes's Forest Rail (Rallicula forbesi), neither of them rails, but members of the flufftail family (Sarothruridae)!

Painting by John Gould of the Forbes's Forest Rail (Rallicula forbesi), CC BY 0.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

The phylogenetic analyses bugged me a little, though, as I thought more rigorous DNA substitution model testing and partitioning (and RY-coding of third-codon positions) might provide more clarity... So I'd better test it! We used the same dataset—except data for two species were unavailable—

Madagascar Forest Rail (Mentocrex kioloides) also isn't a rail, but part of the flufftail family! Though mitogenome data of Mentocrex have been included in published papers, none were readily available, and we went about creating a de novo assembly, since the inclusion of Mentocrex could be important.

Photo: Nigel Voaden (https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/3550287) under CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

This was a super cool study, but the exact placement of cave rails was unresolved: they could be basal to flufftails & adzebills, sister to flufftails (best supported) or to adzebills—yielding wildly different classification options. Expanding Sarothruridae (flufftails) or Aptornithidae (adzebills)?

The different tree topologies compatible with Oswald et al. (2021), from our new paper (Figure 1): https://www.avespress.com/uploads/downloads/212/file/AS_2_8_PDFA.pdf. Depending on the exact placement of cave rails (Nesotrochis spp.), on could envision an expanded Sarothruridae (flufftail family) or an expanded Aptornithidae (adzebill family) that comprises Nesotrochis and possibly also the flufftails.

Figure caption: Potential and previously recovered phylogenetic scenarios within Heliornithes Mayr, 2019. Family Heliornithidae Gray, 1840 is known to be basal within the clade, but the relationships among families Sarothruridae Verheyen, 1957 and Aptornithidae Bonaparte, 1856, as well as genus Nesotrochis Wetmore, 1918 are unresolved. ● = full nodal support; ○ = low nodal support. Clade colours correspond to those of Oswald et al. (2021) as well as Figure 2. Vertical bars to the right of trees represent the necessary expansion of currently recognized families (S on blue = Sarothruridae; A on red = Aptornithidae), should Nesotrochis not be recognized to constitute a new family. (a) Present knowledge, based on Oswald et al. (2021), effectively reflects a hard polytomy, where Sarothruridae, Aptornithidae, and Nesotrochis form a well-supported clade, whose internal arrangement is unresolved. (b) The main tree (“Figure 1”; “Dataset 2”) of Oswald et al. (2021) puts Nesotrochis basal relative to Sarothruridae and Aptornithidae as sisters, but the latter sister relationship only received bootstrap support of 58%. (c) The alternative tree (“Figure S1”; “Dataset 1”) of Oswald et al. (2021) recovers Nesotrochis as sister to Sarothruridae, with Aptornithidae basal relative to them. However, the former sister relationship only received 52% bootstrap support. (d) The third possible topology, previously not recovered, would put Sarothruridae basal relative to the sister taxa Nesotrochis and Aptornithidae.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

So what's new and what was known? In 2021, Jessica Oswald & colleagues managed to extract ancient DNA from a Haitian Cave Rail (Nesotrochis steganinos) and, analysing #mitochondrial DNA, found they were not #rails(!) but more closely related to flufftails and adzebills: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Figure 2 from Oswald et al. (2021): https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0760.
World map showing the historical distributions of cave rails and adzebills and the present distribution of the flufftail family.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 03/07/2025

Welcome a new family of #birds, the Caribbean cave rails, Nesotrochidae! They were—surprisingly—the sisters of NZ adzebills, all sadly extinct. New #OpenAccess paper out in Avian #Systematics w Gerald Mayr, Chen Guangji & Feng Shaohong: www.avespress.com/uploads/down... 🧵 #ornithology #taxonomy 🧪🪶

An artistic rendition of the extinct Antillean Cave Rail, Nesotrochis debooyi Wetmore, 1918. ©Piotr Gryz, with permission.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 20/06/2025

🐦 It's been a while (in several aspects), so I'm extra excited to start the day with a #paper accept. Can't wait for this to hit the press, clarifying relationships among a bunch of cool #birds and introducing a new #avian family! Which one? You'll soon see... 😉 #taxonomy #systematics 🪶🧪

[Road sign with the text "Accept"]

Accept by Nick Youngson (http://www.nyphotographic.com/) under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) from Pix4free (https://pix4free.org/photo/2221/accept.html).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 11/06/2025

My main contribution to this monumentous project has been to shake up the linear sequence of the checklist to better reflect our current understanding of the avian evolutionary tree! Ostrich first—Saltator last no more... We go from Somali Ostrich to Blue-necked Tanager!

Somali Ostrich (Struthio molybdophanes), photo by Steve Garvie under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 at https://www.flickr.com/photos/rainbirder/5396924328.

Blue-necked Tanager (Stilpnia cyanicollis), photo by Alexandra Castañeda Hincapié under CC BY-NC 4.0 at https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/122443363.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 11/06/2025

There's a tab explaining how to use the checklist (different fields etc.), but importantly, there is a also a page outlining various important components of the checklist: www.avilist.org/checklist/co....

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 11/06/2025

The checklist is downloadable from doi.org/10.2173/avil... and comprises *lots* of info, incl e.g. author, year of description, and publication source. Decision summary statements are included for all 1000+ cases where taxonomy differed between IOC, eBird/Clements & @birdlifeglobal.bsky.social.

Recommended citation (see https://www.avilist.org/checklist/v2025/)

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 11/06/2025

🦅 The new unified global #avian #taxonomy #AviList has just been released at www.avilist.org! Xmas for anyone interested in #birds & checklists... The first version will be followed by annual updates, with decisions and processes aimed to be more transparent than its predecessors'. 🪶🧪 🧵

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 02/06/2025

The photos of @ijandrews.bsky.social are great! I filmed with phone while watching in bins, but here's a phone screen grab to water your mouths...

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 17/12/2024

Thanks for the input, Vitor. The light may be playing a part; I somewhat sloppily adjusted brightness to compensate for suboptimal lighting for photography in the collections. Attaching an unadjusted pic here. But it could also be faded due to light exposure, increasing contrast.

Same bird as in original post, no adjustment of brightness.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 17/12/2024

It's a small bugger, collected in end of April in Bartica Grove in northern Guyana. Wing length 49 mm. I'd be very happy for your input! #LBJ #MuseumLife

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Dorsal view with wing somewhat spread, showing wing formula.

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Ventral view, the bird placed on a ruler, showing the body length being 86 mm.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 17/12/2024

🪶Help me out, #ornithology folks of #BirdSky! Curating @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social collections for digitisation, I found this labeled Stripe-tailed Yellow Finch (Sicalis citrina), which it's NOT. #SouthAmerican #birds ≠ my forte: is this a Blue-black Grassquit (Volatinia jacarina) or something else?

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Lateral view of the head and upper body.

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Lateral view.

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Dorsal view.

Bird skin specimen from the National Museums Scotland collection. This is a brown and streaky finch-like bird with conical bill. Ventral view.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 26/11/2024

Last week, rigorous analyses by @thelabandfield.bsky.social & co-authors saw Slender-billed Curlew declared #extinct in #OpenAccess @ibisjournal.bsky.social paper (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), while we (coincidentally!) digitised the 7 @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social specimens. #birds 🪶🧪

A skin specimen of the Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) in the National Museums Scotland bird collections. The labeled bird is lying on its back. (Photo: Martin Stervander)

Our star volunteers Shawn Waddoups and Rosie Filipiak record the data from the labels of Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) skin specimens in the National Museums Scotland bird collections. Rosie, with a camera in one hand, is handling and documenting one bird, while Shawn is entering data in front of the computer. Between them on a work bench is a tray with another six Slender-billed Curlews. (Photo: Martin Stervander)

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 20/11/2024

'Tis done. From now, I'm here, and all of me except an informative finger is removed from #Twitter. For anyone considering it, I'd recommend @luca.run's free & efficient script github.com/lucahammer/t.... It's a 2-step process that'll also give you an archive of your Twitter history! #xit

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 19/11/2024

Participated in a photo project combined with some #birding at Ferny Ness ( #Edinburgh -ish) this morning. Freezing cold, but beautiful and quite rewarding with at least 50 Little Auks (🇺🇸 Dovekies; Alle alle) and 1 Great Northern Diver (🇺🇸 Common Loon; Gavia immer) at Ferny Ness. 🪶🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Ferny Ness 19 November: sunny with clouds on a blue sky, some land in the foreground, behind that Firth of Forth, in the distance Edinburgh.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 18/11/2024

Hi all new followers & other folks! In National Museums Scotland's #birds collections, our amazing volunteers are digitising specimen label data to make the #museum collection accessible for #research. Today colourful pittas (Pittidae) and Whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus). #Ornithology 🪶🧪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A Blue-headed Pitta (Hydrornis baudii) in focus at the left, with its glimmering blue crown and deep russet back. In the blurry background, trays of brown Whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus) and our volunteers Shawn and Iain in action in front of the computer.

The beautiful breast of the Malayan Banded-Pitta (Hydrornis irena). Glossy blue and orange horizontal stripes!

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 04/09/2024

On derogatory names: Today, in BirdLife 🇸🇪's #Taxonomic Committee, we announce phasing out almost all remaining eponyms, but also renaming #extinct Numenius borealis to BÄRSPOV. I urge 🇬🇧-speaking #birding communities to join in highlighting the cool ecology of the Crowberry Curlew [Eskimo Curlew]! 🪶

Numenius borealis skin specimen and egg in the National Museums Scotland bird collections. Photo (c): Martin Stervander.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 25/08/2024

Peak #Edinburgh? Breakfast, last #EdFringe show with Maeve Press, ☕️, #NMS exhibition, home to Portobello, walked to the beach for some #seabirds & saw 11 Manx Shearwaters 🪶 + other stuff, 2 more Manx from kitchen window ❎ just before dinner, and now the 🇮🇪 neighbours came with a Guinness loaf. 🤩

NMS, National Museums Scotland, the other day.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 13/08/2024

Y/day was bonkers in the NMS #musem #birds collections! Ian Andrews & I stumbled upon—and identified—a new 🇬🇧 1st record of Pechora Pipit (Anthus gustavi), knocking a decade off the previous 1st. We also found a remarkable first for N America 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽 & S Am by >130 years! 🤩Stay tuned! #Ornithology

NMS Pechora Pipit specimen collected in there Orkney Islands 1 October 1913: dorsal view.

NMS Pechora Pipit specimen collected in there Orkney Islands 1 October 1913: ventral view.

NMS Pechora Pipit specimen collected in there Orkney Islands 1 October 1913: tail feathers.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 21/05/2024

For #PrideMonth, Peacock airs the #nature doc #QueerPlanet in 🇺🇸. As a #queer 🦩🐧🦜🪶scientist & nature tv viewer since age 7, I'm proud to feature in this, talking #birds! Naturally, ➡️ anti-wokers go 🍌🍌; 🙏 for PR: www.them.us/story/queer-.... Check trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gikf.... #LGBTQ 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Queer Planet poster from Peacock, featuring two flamingos whose necks and heads for the shape of a heart.

Yours truly waiving his hands and talking about same-sex behaviour in birds in Queer Planet.

Upset anti-woke folks, doing a segment on some conservative Americans TV news show about the horror of featuring same-sex behaviour and sex change in animals. The banner reads: "The radical gender agenda".

A male lion mounting another male lion, a piece from Queer Planet that seems particularly provocative.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 11/05/2024

So today's seen three new additions to the #Portobello beach list: Black Guillemot, Black-throated Diver and #Aurora borealis. Quite the trio! 🖤💜 #birds

Aurora borealis in purples, blues, and turquoise over Portobello, Edinburgh.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

We show that our understanding of evolutionary processes is being greatly enhanced using genomic tools. Now, it is critical to complement this information with ecological and behavioural traits of both extinct and extant avian island species. Interested by can't access the pdf? Contact me. 8/8

Illustrations of island forms of quails (Coturnix spp.).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

We found support for 92% of the 66 radiations having radiated in situ (on the islands), comprising 76% of species from a total of 314. 7/8

Schematic of the colonization of Macaronesian Islands by a chaffinch ancestor. [Chaffinch species on map with inferred colonization routes as arrows.]

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

For the credible set of 66 insular evolutionary radiations, we find that at least 17 (26%) include species with sympatric distributions and that most radiations can be grouped in the non-adaptive category. 6/8

Figure 2 of Illera et al. (2024). Number of nonadaptive or adaptive evolutionary radiations recorded in avian systems on oceanic islands
in relation to the estimated number of species per radiation. This is based on a set of 66 credible radiations, for which most in the category “Insufficient evidence” are likely nonadaptive. Adaptive radiations appear to be very limited in number in comparison with nonadaptive radiations; however, they dominate the very speciose radiations (≥17 species). [Horizontal bar chart.]

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

We present a new comprehensive global list of potential avian radiations on oceanic islands, based on published island species checklists, taxonomic studies, and phylogenetic analyses. 5/8

Illustrated circular global avian tree of life. Water color by Jon Fjeldså.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

With this review we summarise the key insights gained from decades of research on adaptive and non-adaptive radiations of both extant and extinct insular bird species. 4/8

Figure 3 from Illera et al. (2024). Relationship between global avian species diversity (number of species not in oceanic island radiations)
and number of species within oceanic island radiations (the latter excluding cases with low or unresolved support or reflecting likely repeated colonization events). The size of circles represents the number of evolutionary radiations. Pink circles signify avian orders, while turquoise circles represent families within the species-rich order Passeriformes. Note that the y-axis is drawn on a log2-scale and the x-axis is truncated. Some prominent clades are labeled. (Illustrations by Juan Varela.)

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

However, the term radiation is frequently associated with adaptive radiations, overlooking the important role of non-adaptive radiations in generating diversity. 3/8

A less well-known radiation, the Nesospiza finches of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. [Large-billed and small-billed finch held by me.] Photo: Martim Melo.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

Avian evolutionary radiations on islands have long fascinated biologists as they provide the ideal variation to study the ecological and evolutionary forces operating on the continuum between incipient lineages to complete speciation. 2/8

A very classic radiation, Darwin's finches of the Galápagos islands. [Drawings of four finches with dramatically varying bill size.]

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 15/04/2024

Our review on #avian #island radiations is now published in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology: doi.org/10.1101/cshp... Great collab with Luís Valente, Martim Melo, JC Rando, and lead by fabulous Juan Carlos Illera. #evolution #speciation #birds #ornithology 🪶🦜🏝️ 🧵 1/8 (drafted by JCI)

Diversity of bill morphology exemplified by Hawaiian honeycreepers.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 02/04/2024

Throughout a whole batch. And therefore, probably throughout several batches around then.... 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 02/04/2024

I'm not entirely sure, some very early Linux? 🙃 What do you think it looks like? It's clearly not a one-off either...

Excerpt of museum register (in paper ledger).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 02/04/2024

Confessions of a curator. This is NOT how #museum registration numbers are supposed to work... (Zoom in on those labels.) Hello, colleagues of 110 years ago, could you please fix this? Skin specimens of Jamaican Spindalis (Spindalis nigricephala). #birds 🪶

Four skin specimens of Jamaican Spindalis, so given the same museum registration number.

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 02/04/2024

Fancy a nice digest of the bird family tree news from there #B10K project? Head over to NHM at www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new..., where @joshlukedavis.bsky.social has written up a story in the delightful way he usually does! 🪶 #birds #ornithology #SciComm

Collage of Elementaves bird species, arranged following the classical elements, from bottom to top, of water, earth, air, and fire. All images with CC0 license, unless otherwise stated. Water: Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), Common Loon (Gavia immer). Earth: Indian Nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus) [Hari K Patibanda, https://flic.kr/p/2oM6rs3, CC BY-NC 2.0], Tasmanian Nativehen (Tribonyx mortierii). Air: Common Swift (Apus apus), Stripe-tailed Hummingbird (Eupherusa eximia). Fire: Sunbittern (Eurypygia helias) [Jean Ogden, https://flic.kr/p/2puQRv2, CC BY 2.0], White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon lepturus).

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 01/04/2024

Ah, I'm just being thick! Well, flamingoes still in Mirandornithes. Hoatzin and Strisores parts of the cool NKOTB, and here's for Oxyruncidae if you haven't already found the extended data figs:

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 01/04/2024

Finally, extensive review of avian #fossils enabled calibration of no less than 34 nodes, yielding much more precise age estimations (including some surprises!). Importantly, most of Neoaves diversification occurred just AFTER the Chicxulub asteroid impact at the K–Pg boundary.

Extended Data Figure 6a of Stiller et al. (2024) showing differences in node age point estimates (circle) and 95% confidence intervals (line) between the new study and those of Jarvis et al. 2014 and Prum et al. (2015). Look at that old Tinamidae and the young Accipitridae! ;-)

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 01/04/2024

So, can you trust the new tree? A #phylogeny is not the truth, but MANY analyses assess this in the paper. A cool aspect is that the morphology of the birds lends the tree some credibility: in brief, 9 phenotypic traits track the new tree more tightly with less inferred shifts!

Figure 5a of Stiller et al. (2024) showing how Pagel’s lambda is consistently higher (has a stronger phylogenetic signal) across nine morphometric variables, with the new main tree compared to that of Prum et al. (2015) [too few species in Jarvis et al. 2014].

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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · 01/04/2024

Here’s a handy comparison to the 2 previous main avian trees by Jarvis et al. (2014) and Prum et al. (2015). Some reshuffling! This new tree is derived with coalescence-based analyses of 363 species in a 63-Mbp matrix of intergenic DNA—state of the art #phylogenomics.

Extended Data Figure 5 of Stiller et al. (2024) showing topological comparisons of the new bird tree, at the level or order, with those of Jarvis et al. (2014) and Prum et al. (2015).

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