Oh, now you’re asking for something beyond the scope of a quick comment. It’s a fairly long list, and it varies a little bit depending on who you talk to. Wikipedia lists 43. I’d combine a few of them, notably Pelecaniformes and Suliformes.
1 (small mammals) or 2 (birds).
But they have to be really lucky.
@swamidass, if you have any further interest in bird phylogeny, may I recommend a fine and colorful book, Bird Families of the World, by David Winkler, Shawn Billerman, and Irby Lovette? It’s pretty close to up-to-date, and it attempts to have at least one page on every single family. The only major flaw is that it doesn’t include a complete phylogenetic tree, but you can come close to constructing one from the couple of sentences in each description on “Related Families”.
One more, quite out of date, but I like it: Harshman J. Classification and phylogeny of birds. In: Jamieson B.G.M. editor. Reproductive biology and phylogeny of birds. Enfield, NH, Science Publishers, Inc., 2007. p. 1-35. It’s much shorter, but no colors.
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I am interested, but it is expensive!
Look at Mr. cheapskate tenured professor.
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That’s the joy of being an academic with access to a library.
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Library? Foo! You must possess it for your own!
I mean sure for me of course but maybe Josh’s passing interest doesn’t warrant it, for now…
You are talking to the guy who owns more field guides than he can count, including for countries I’m sure I’ll never visit. And I have all the HBW, and most of the HMW, and just yesterday dropped another $230 on bird books at Lynx! It’s an addiction! I’m very rapidly running out of space for them all.
Yeah, I’ve recently bought the field guide to Malaysia (in my defense, I was planning to go there) and the one-volume All the Birds of the World. Of course I have the complete HBW. Doesn’t everyone?
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Yep, I just ordered All the Birds from Lynx too in addition to the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago and the new Fjeldså et al book on passerine evolution. Can’t wait! All the Birds will likely go in the office alongside Howard and Moore, Sibley and Monroe and the Clement’s checklist.
I wonder how much bookshelf space Nathaniel Jeanson has devoted to natural history books? Seeing as he keeps insisting there are river otters in Hawaii I think not much.