Sibley and Ahlquist (1990) divided the oscines into two clades they called Corvida and Passerida. While Passerida has been confirmed (with some slight changes of membership), Barker et al. (2002) showed that Corvida was not a clade but a grade, as shown in the tree above. Thus Corvida, as a group, does not really exist.
Sibley and Ahlquist’s (1990) Menuroidea included Menuridae (lyrebirds), Atrichornithidae (scrub-birds), Climacteridae (Australasian treecreepers), and Ptilonorhynchidae (bowerbirds). More recent studies show that the latter two are sister taxa and are more closely related to other oscines than to Menuridae (Barker et al. 2002, 2004; Ericson et al. 2002a; Beresford et al. 2005; but see Ericson et al. 2002b). There are so far no sequence data available for Atrichornithidae, and it has been retained here within a reduced Menuroidea (Sibley and Ahlquist 1990). The unnamed group including Climacteridae and Ptilonorhynchidae is sister to all oscines other than Menuroidea (Barker et al. 2002, 2004; Ericson et al. 2002b; Beresford et al. 2005; but see Ericson et al. 2002b).
Meliphagoidea consists of Maluridae (fairy wrens), Meliphagidae (Honeyeaters), Pardalotidae (pardalotes), Acanthizidae (scrub-birds, thornbills), and Dasyornis (bristleheads) (Cracraft and Feinstein 2000; Barker et al. 2002, 2004) and is sister to the remaining oscines (Barker et al. 2002, 2004; Beresford et al. 2005). Relationships within Meliphagidae and Acanthizidae have been investigated by Driskell and Christidis (2004). Two more families, Pomatostomidae (Australian babblers) and Orthonychidae (logrunners) are successively more closely related to Corvoidea and Passerida (Barker et al. 2002, 2004).
Three more clades form a polytomy with Corvoidea and Passerida: Callaeatidae (New Zealand wattlebirds), Cnemophilinae (traditionally supposed to be birds of paradise, belonging to the corvoid Paradiseidae), and Melanocharitidae (most berrypeckers — one genus, Paramythia, is corvoid) (Cracraft and Feinstein 2000; Barker et al. 2002, 2004; Beresford et al. 2005).
Ames, P. L. 1971. The morphology of the syrinx in passerine birds. Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 37:1–194.
Chesser, R. T. and J. ten Have. 2007. On the phylogenetic position of the scrub-birds (Passeriformes : Menurae: Atrichornithidae) of Australia. Journal of Ornithology 148(4):471-476.
Ericson, P. G. P., L. Christidis, M. Irestedt, and J. A. Norman. 2002a. Systematic affinities of the lyrebirds (Passeriformes: Menura), with a novel classification of the major groups of passerine birds. Mol. Phylogen. Evol. 25:53-62.
Ericson, P. G. P., L. Christidis, A. Cooper, M. Irestedt, J. Jackson, U. S. Johansson, and J. A. Norman. 2002b. A Gondwanan origin of passerine birds supported by DNA sequences of the endemic New Zealand wrens. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 269:235-241.
Ericson PGP, Christidis L, Irestedt M, Norman JA. 2002. Systematic affinities of the lyrebirds (Passeriformes : Menura), with a novel classification of the major groups of passerine birds. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 25:53-62.
Jønsson, K.A. and J. Fjeldså. 2006. A phylogenetic supertree of oscine passerine birds (Aves: Passeri). Zoologica Scripta 35:149-186.
Jønsson, K.A., J. Fjeldså, P.G.P. Ericson, and M. Irestedt. 2007. Systematic placement of an enigmatic Southeast Asian taxon Eupetes macrocerus and implications for the biogeography of a main songbird radiation, the Passerida. Biology Letters 3(3):323-326.
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