I was wondering if old world sparrows and new world sparrows were in a superfamily for sparrows, so I did some research. I found that new world sparrows were very closely related to buntings, so I’m wondering if these three families combine.
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Moved to Nature Talk as this isn’t about iNaturalist directly.
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The sparrows are not a monophyletic group (all each other’s closest relatives), nor even paraphyletic (mostly each other’s closest relatives with another group or two thrown in). Rather American sparrows (Passerellidae) are called sparrows because they reminded European people of European sparrows (Passeridae). Both of these families are members of the songbirds (order Passeriformes), and so are the various other birds around the world whose common names might think you are sparrows. You can see on this phylogeny of Passeriformes that the two groups are not particularly closely related: https://www.bird-phylogeny.de/superorders/australaves/passeriformes/
So sparrows are polyphyletic.
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They all belong to the parvorder Passerida.
Sometimes they are placed in the superfamily Passeroidea, but this classification rank-conflicts with the superfamilies Emberizoidea and Ploceoidea.
Around 40.21% of passerine observations on iNaturalist belong to the smallest clade with Old and New World sparrows.
Edit: It doesn’t include all sparrows because there’s actually a third type of sparrow, Padda sparrows.
The “new world sparrows”, Passerellidae, are part of a radiation of birds that happened in north and south america over the last ~17 million years or so, named the Emberizoidea.
The common ancestor of Emberizoidea probably started in the Americas, but early on, one lineage went back to Eurasia and formed the ancestor of the old world buntings (Emberizidae) and the longspurs (Calcariidae). Meanwhile, the group continued to diversify in the Americas, forming the new world tanagers, sparrows, warblers, cardinals, and a bunch of smaller families.
The closest relatives of the Paserelidae sparrows are the new world warblers, blackbirds, and some smaller lineages endemic to the Caribbean and Central America (eg. chat-tanager, wrenthrush, Puerto Rican tanager, Spindalis).
So, in the grand scheme of things, the Passerellidae are fairly closely related to the Emberizidae (both in Emberizoidea), though they are not each other’s closest relatives (Emberizidae is closer to the longspurs, Paserellidae is closer to new world warblers/cardinals/tanagers/etc.
The Passeridae sparrows are even more distantly related: the common ancestor of the Passeridae and Emberizoidea probably lived in Eurasia a little over 20 million years ago. After Passeridae split off, that lineage did not produce any other families, so technically the Emberizoidea are their closest relatives, but so are the Fringillidae finches and Motacillidae wagtails that branched off before Emberizoidea started to radiate into its different families.
The exact dates vary in different studies, but here is a timeline from the paper “Earth history and the passerine superradiation” to give some perspective:
47 Mya: common ancestor of all passerines lived in Australasia
44 Mya: oscines and suboscines diverged from each other, still in Australasia
~30 Mya: Corvides (mostly crow-like groups) and Passerides (mostly sparrow-like groups) diverged from each other (still in Australasia).
~27 Mya: ancestor of Sylviida, Muscicapida, and Passerida begin to diversify in Eurasia
~19 Mya: Passeridae branches off from their sister (Motacillidae, Fringillidae, and Emberizoidea) in Eurasia
~18 Mya: Motacillidae branches off from their sister (Fringillidae, and Emberizoidea) in Eurasia
~17 Mya: Fringillidae branches off from Emberizoidea. Their ancestor was probably in the Americas at this point
~16-10 Mya: the Emberizoidea families radiate in the Americas
~14 Mya: the ancestor of Emberizidae and Calcariidae goes back to Eurasia
~13-14 Mya Passerellidae splits from its sister (Parulidae, Icteridae, and some small families)
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One more grant for bird taxonomy and I’m switching to Platyhelminthes out of spite
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