Résumé
The Corvides (previously referred to as the core Corvoidea) are a
morphologically diverse clade of passerine birds comprising nearly 800
species. The group originated some 30 million years ago in the
proto-Papuan archipelago, to the north of Australia, from where lineages
have dispersed and colonized all of the world’s major continental and
insular landmasses (except Antarctica). During the last decade multiple
species-level phylogenies have been generated for individual corvoid
families and more recently the inter-familial relationships have been
resolved, based on phylogenetic analyses using multiple nuclear loci. In
the current study we analyse eight nuclear and four mitochondrial loci to
generate a dated phylogeny for the majority of corvoid species. This
phylogeny includes 667 out of 780 species (85.5%), 141 out of 143 genera
(98.6%) and all 31 currently recognized families, thus providing a
baseline for comprehensive macroecological, macroevolutionary and
biogeographical analyses. Using this phylogeny we assess the temporal
consistency of the current taxonomic classification of families and
genera. By adopting an approach that enforces temporal consistency by
causing the fewest possible taxonomic changes to currently recognized
families and genera, we find the current familial classification to be
largely temporally consistent, whereas that of genera is not.