Researchers looked at genetic distinctions in birds in hopes of learning how to better-preserve them.
The researchers believe the most genetically diverse bird is the South American oilbird, which has endured 80 million years of evolution, a Cell Press news release reported.
"Evolutionary distinctness is a metric that informs about the loss of evolutionary information that the extinction of a given species would cause," Walter Jetz of Yale University said in the news release. "Among very closely related species, we would expect a lot of genetic redundancy. If there is only one of a kind, say an oilbird, and it were to go extinct, all of the information on how to make and be that species would be lost forever. Thanks to global family trees, we are able to now compare this aspect of distinctness for all species, something that due to lack of data is not possible for any other characteristics."
"Evolutionary distinctness helps us identify those species we cannot afford to lose," coauthor Dave Redding of University College London said in the news release.
Researchers performed the first "fully quantitative, phylogenetically and geographically integrated conservation assessment" on a variety of bird species from across the globe. The most "genetically diverse" birds were those that had the least evolutionary connections to other species.
The team pinpointed the 50 most genetically diverse birds; included in this list were the osprey and ostrich. It also included birds that were extremely range-restricted such as the New Caledonian owlet-nightjar and the Solomon Islands frogmouth.
The team used this information to calculate the "evolutionary distinctness" (EDR) of the birds, which connects evolutionary distinctness and breeding area size.
Top EDR species have a lot of evolutionary information but are usually exclusive to one small area; environmental disturbances and other conservation problems that affect these birds could largely affect the "tree of life."
"In the face of global change and limited resources, integration of growing spatial and phylogenetic biodiversity information holds promise for effectively and economically meeting societal biodiversity conservation targets," the researchers said.
