“Stephen Richards, a genomicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who is leading an effort to sequence 28 insect genomes, praises the team’s decision to systematically select bird species so that one from each taxonomic order was represented, rather than picking scientists’ favourite species. ‘It’s a foundational work for the next century of biological work into birds,’ he says. ‘We need this revolution across all of biology.'” View more …