Curr. Biol. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.10.051 (2008)

Credit: J.C. ANDERTON

Since their discovery by explorer James Cook, five species of Hawaiian bird have been lumped in with Australasian honeyeaters, of the family Meliphagidae, by classifiers. Robert Fleischer and his team at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC report that none of the five now-extinct Hawaiian honeyeaters belongs there.

Using DNA sequences from museum specimens, the researchers report that the birds are actually members of the Passerida, the group of well-known songbirds that includes birds such as sparrows, warblers, wrens and waxwings. Analysis of nuclear DNA indicated that these birds may have diverged from their nearest living mainland ancestor at about the same time bird-pollinated plants took root on the islands 14 million–17 million years ago. They propose reclassifying them as a unique family, the Mohoidae.