Accipitrimorphae is a
clade of
birds of prey that include the orders
Cathartiformes (
New World vultures) and
Accipitriformes (diurnal birds of prey such as eagles, hawks,
osprey and
secretarybird).[2][3][4][5] However, this group might be a junior synonym (or at least a subjective one) of Accipitriformes. The DNA-based proposal and the NACC and IOC classifications include the
New World vultures in the Accipitriformes,[2][6] but the SACC classifies the New World vultures as a separate order, the
Cathartiformes[7] which has been adopted here. The
placement of the New World vultures has been unclear since the early 1990s. The reason for this is the controversial systematic history of the New World vultures as they were assumed to be more related to (or a subfamily of)
Ciconiidae (the storks) after
Sibley and Ahlquist work on their
DNA-DNA hybridization studies conducted in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.[8] The stork-vulture relationship has seemed to not be supported.[2][5] Regardless of whether to use Accipitrimorphae or Accipitriformes, these birds belong to the clade
Telluraves.[2][5]
^Mayr G, Smith T. A diverse bird assemblage from the Ypresian of Belgium furthers knowledge of early Eocene avifaunas of the North Sea Basin. N Jb Geol Paläontol, Abh. 2019;291:253–281. doi: 10.1127/njgpa/2019/0801.
^Yuri, T. (2013) Parsimony and model-based analyses of indels in avian nuclear genes reveal congruent and incongruent phylogenetic signals. Biology, 2:419–44.
^Kimball, R.T. et al. (2013) Identifying localized biases in large datasets: A case study using the Avian Tree of Life. Mol Phylogenet Evol. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.05.029