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.[1]
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 primarily based on the analysis of Carl Oliveros and colleagues published in 2019.[2][a]
^A 2020 study by Heiner Kuhl and colleagues omitted Rhodinocichlidae, Calyptophilidae and Phaenicophilidae but obtained a similar phylogeny for the remaining families.[3] Earlier studies using more limited DNA sequence data obtained different relationships between the families.[4][1]