Emberizoidea
Superfamily of passerine birds
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Through Endemism, Americas and North America
Evolution
The group originated after a rapid speciation event in North America after arriving from Eurasia via the Bering Strait during the Miocene epoch. Two groups from within the emberizoids diversified further in the Neotropics, where one clade comprised several small Caribbean endemic species and the other, the tanager-cardinal group, in South America. Another two families, the Emberizidae (buntings) and the Calcariidae (longspurs and snow buntings), returned to Eurasia and colonized.
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Taxonomy
The interrelationships among the emberizoids has been a source of contention as several genera have been shifted around in many phylogenetic studies. The cladogram of the emberizoids shown below is based on the analysis of Carl Oliveros and colleagues published in 2019.
The Oliveros at al (2019) study considered Spindalidae and Nesospingidae to both be part of Phaenicophilidae, and Icteriidae as being a part of Icteridae, but they are shown as distinct in this tree. In addition, while Teretistridae was not analyzed in that study, previous studies recovered them allied with Icteridae or Zeledoniidae.