Deep global evolutionary radiation in birds: diversification and trait evolution in the cosmopolitan bird family Rallidae

Sufficient breadth of taxon sampling in major organisms groups is important to identify more realistic biological diversification processes that reveal the degree of historical biogeographic signal and net diversification retained in the current lineage distribution. We examine the mechanisms driving diversity in one of the major avian clades with an exceptional large-scale radiation, the family Rallidae, using the most complete species-level (∼70%) time calibrated hypothesis of evolutionary relationships produced to date. We find that Rallidae exhibit a pattern of diversification involving episodes of range expansion and regional speciation that results in most clades represented in all habitable continents. Our results suggest that several features may have played an important role on the diversification rates in Rallidae. Lineage accumulation is nearly constant and morphology (frontal shield and body size), innovate (flightlessness), habitat (forest) and distribution (insular) traits are possibly associated with increasing diversification rates along with spatial and ecological processes during the Miocene and Pliocene. Diversification and the global retention of lineage diversity have occurred in multiple lineages in Rallidae due to their dispersal ability and exploitation of ecological opportunities.