The Old World buntings (Aves: Emberizidae) mainly inhabit open habitats in Eurasia and Africa. It has long been debated whether the group originated in the New World or the Old World and whether their radiation is related to the expansion of open habitats and shifts in migratory behaviours. To answer these questions, we reconstructed their biogeographic histories and analysed their diversification patterns in terms of time, space and traits using a near-complete phylogeny. We found the most recent common ancestor of Emberizidae and their sisters distributed in the New World. After invasion into the eastern Palearctic through the Bering Straits Bridge in the middle Miocene, subsequent loss of migrations probably split Emberizidae into two lineages: one radiated in Afrotropical deserts and savannah and the other mainly diversified in Palearctic semi-open to open forests, the mountains of Central Asia and the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. This group began to diversify in the late Miocene (~10 Ma), at first rapidly, coinciding with the expansion of open habitats due to global cooling. As the available habitats were occupied, the diversification rate of buntings decreased rapidly in arid habitats, but shifts of habitat preference to open forests led to terminal radiations on the southern edge of taiga forests in the mountains of Central Asia and the eastern Palearctic. Our results provide insight into the biogeographic histories and radiation of the Old World buntings in open habitats.

Many bufonidae species distributed in Asia are inhabited in a variety of environments. However, there are few studies focusing on the speciation of Asia Bufonidae. In this study, we reconstruct the phylogeny tree of Asia Bufonidae with timescale in BEAST based on a multiple sequence alignment of 12S gene and 16S gene sequences from 13 Bufonidae species and whole mtDNA from five Bufonidae species. The results show that the bufonids split into two major clades. In general, there are two lineages mainly distributed on different sides of the Himalayas. According to the divergence time and distribution of the two lineages, we imply that the differentiation of Bufonidea may be closely linked to the uplift of QTP and consequent monsoon climate.

Crested Bunting ( Melophus lathami ) is the single species of the Melophus , which was mainly distributed to the south of Asia. The complete sequence of the mitochondrial DNA of M. lathami (16,799bp in length) have been obtained, which consists of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, two rRNA genes (12S rRNA and 16S rRNA), and one control region (D-loop). The nucleotide composition was 30.1% A, 33.0% C, 14.3% G, and 22.6% T. Besides, the phylogenetic tree based on 12S and 16S rRNA was divided into three clades. M. lathami was determined in the second lineage.

Emberiza elegans is a common bunting with very wide geographical distribution. In this paper, the complete mitochondrial genome of E. elegans (16,779 bp in length) was analyzed for building the database. The results showed that it contained 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes and one control region. The base composition of mtDNA was A (29.4%), G (14.7%), C (32.7%), and T (23.2%), therefore, the percentage of A and T (52.6%) was slightly higher than G and C (47.4%). All the genes in E. elegans were distributed on the H-strand, except for the ND6 subunit gene and ten tRNA genes which were encoded on the L-strand.

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