COLONIAL BREEDING AND SPECIATION IN BIRDS

It was recently suggested that bird species which breed colonially mig ht be under stronger sexual selection, have faster rates of evolution and might therefore speciate more rapidly than bird species which do n ot. If true, then colonial taxa should contain more species than non-c olonial taxa, other things being equal. When similarity through common descent is accounted for, there is little evidence for an association between the number of species in a clade and whether it is colonial o r not.