Neoaves is a clade that consists of all modern (Neornithes or Aves) with the exception of Palaeognathae (ratites and kin) and Galloanserae (ducks, chickens and kin).
The early diversification of the various neoavian groups occurred very rapidly around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event,[Matzke, A. et al. (2012) Retroposon insertion patterns of neoavian birds: strong evidence for an extensive incomplete lineage sorting era Mol. Biol. Evol.]
Phylogeny
The early diversification of the various neoavian groups occurred very rapidly around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
As a result of the rapid radiation, attempts to resolve their relationships have produced conflicting results, some quite controversial, especially in the earlier studies.
[Matzke, A. et al. (2012) "Retroposon insertion patterns of neoavian birds: strong evidence for an extensive incomplete lineage sorting era" Mol. Biol. Evol.] Nevertheless, some recent large phylogenomic studies of Neoaves have led to much progress on defining orders and supraordinal groups within Neoaves. Still, the studies have failed to produce to a consensus on an overall high order topology of these groups.
A genomic study of 48 taxa by Jarvis and colleagues in 2014 divided Neoaves into two main clades,
Columbea and
Passerea, but an analysis of 198 taxa by Prum and colleagues in 2015 recovered different groupings for the earliest split in Neoaves.
[ A reanalysis with an extended dataset by Reddy and colleagues in 2017 suggested this was due to the type of sequence data, with coding sequences favouring the Prum topology.]
Despite other disagreements, these studies do agree on several supraordinal groups, which Reddy and colleagues in 2017 dubbed the "magnificent seven", which together with three "orphaned orders" make up Neoaves.
As such, the exact true phylogeny of Neoaves is not fully understood and can be represented as a polytomy:
Comparison of different proposals for neoavian radiation
