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Bird Research at Museum Victoria

Bird research is one of the strengths of the Sciences Department of Museum Victoria. The museum's extensive ornithology collection provides the basis for this research - the collection consists of 75 000 items, including bird study skins, mounts, skeletons, eggs, nests, spirit specimens and an extensive frozen DNA tissue bank. DNA sequencing and other bird research is undertaken by the Population and Evolutionary Genetics Unit, with current projects in the areas of the systematics, taxonomy, biogeography, evolutionary ecology and conservation of birds.

Australian Songbirds - A Case Study

In recent years, Dr Les Christidis, the Head of the Sciences Department at Museum Victoria, and other museum staff, have undertaken ground breaking research into the relationship between the songbirds of Australia and the look-alike songbirds of the northern hemisphere. The account below explains the significance of this research.

The early European settlers of Australia noticed that Australian songbirds bore strong resemblances to more familiar European species. Naturalists of the time tried to 'pigeon-hole' Australia's bird species with a classification based largely on Northern Hemisphere species. Hence we have robins, wrens, flycatchers and warblers in Australia: names that are echoed in a typical English garden.

In determining the classification of Australian songbirds, the naturalists assumed that birds similar in behaviour and appearance were related. They also assumed that Southern Hemisphere birds would be relatives of, and probably derived from, Northern Hemisphere birds. It seemed likely that birds, being more mobile than mammals, had colonised Australia from Eurasia.

Australian robins and warblers were supposed to be the descendants of these early waves of colonisation. Even unique birds such as lyrebirds and bowerbirds were thought to have been descendants from now extinct Northern Hemisphere birds. The idea that Australia may have had its own separate and diverse bird fauna that was not of Eurasian origin was not considered.

New Ideas

In the 1970s, scientists began to question past theories on the evolution of Australian songbirds. They suggested that many bird groups present in Australia had originated and diversified there. However, the strong resemblance in anatomy and external appearance between Australian songbirds and songbirds of Eurasia argued against such a notion. Some scientists, though, speculated that convergent evolution might have been obscuring the true origins of Australian birds.

The advent of DNA studies over the past 15 years allowed the origins and evolution of the Australian bird fauna to be unravelled. DNA studies provided the first clear evidence that most of Australia's songbirds were not derived from Northern Hemisphere stock but had evolved independently on the Australian continent. Australia's robins, flycatchers and honeyeaters, to name a few, were all more closely related to one another than to their Northern Hemisphere look-alikes. The remarkable outward similarities are a classic example of convergent evolution.

Sitellas and Nuthatches

Australian Sittella Artist: Kate Nolan

Northern Hemisphere Nuthatch Artist: Kate Nolan

Australia's sittellas and Northern Hemisphere nuthatches look very similar. Both have evolved feet and beaks that allow them to feed on insects that live under the bark of trees. As well as body shape, they have both evolved the same habit of hopping down the trunks of trees in search of prey.

Despite similarities in appearance and behaviour, the Australian sittellas are not closely related to nuthatches. This is a further example of convergent evolution - the evolution of similar features in unrelated species, through selective factors such as similar environments or diets.

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