The clade's name, meaning 'southern birds', reflects the group's evolutionary origins in the Southern Hemisphere: passerines and parrots in Australia, and falcons and sereimas in South America.[4]
As in the case of Afroaves, the most basal clades have predatory extant members, suggesting this was the ancestral lifestyle;[6] however, some researchers like Darren Naish are skeptical of this assessment, since some extinct representatives such as the herbivorous Strigogyps led other lifestyles.[7] Basal parrots and falcons are at any rate vaguely crow-like and probably omnivorous.[8]
^Kimball RT, Wang N, Heimer-McGinn V, Ferguson C, Braun EL (2013). "Identifying localized biases in large datasets: A case study using the Avian Tree of Life". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 69 (3). Mol Phylogenet Evol: 1021–1032. Bibcode:2013MolPE..69.1021K. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.05.029. PMID23791948.