Question

You are a scientist studying large, flightless birds in australia and africa. how could you use molecular biology to determine if these birds evolved from a shared common ancestor?

Answer 1

Ratites – a group of flightless birds including the emu, ostrich and extinct moa – were long believed to have evolved from a single flightless ancestor, but research published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution shows they lost their power of flight independently.

Allan Baker and colleagues from Royal Ontario Museum, University of Torontoand Ontario Institute for Cancer Research used genetic techniques to show that tinamous, small flying birds from Central and South America, actually evolved within the ratites group.

“We confirmed previous studies based on small DNA data sets that moa are most closely related to tinamous,” says Professor Baker. “This means that the ancestor of all these birds was most likely flighted.”

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