Diversification and dispersal in the Americas revealed by new phylogenies of the wrens and allies (Passeriformes: Certhioidea)

The passerine superfamily Certhioidea lacks a complete phylogeny despite decades of recognition as a clade and extensive systematic work within all its constituent families. Here, we inferred a near-complete species level phylogeny of Certhioidea from a molecular supermatrix, including the first comprehensive sampling of the wrens (Troglodytidae), and used this phylogeny to infer its biogeographic and diversification histories. We also inferred an expanded phylogeny including nearly 100 putative phylospecies previously documented in the literature, and we found that including this diversity had notable impacts on the inferred evolutionary history of Certhioidea. This phylospecies-level tree documented a few instances of species paraphyly, some previously described in the literature and some novel. We found that Certhioidea originated largely in Eurasia and dispersed into North America five times in the last 20 million years, including at the origin of the “New World certhioids”, wrens a..., , , # Diversification and dispersal in the Americas revealed by new phylogenies of the wrens and allies (Passeriformes: Certhioidea)

Tyler S. Imfeld, F. Keith Barker, Hernán Vázquez-Miranda, Jaime A. Chaves, Patricia Escalante, Garth M. Spellman, and John Klicka

SEQUENCE DATA AND XML FILES:

1. Certh_spp_UCE.xml
A .xml file used to run the species-level phylogenetic analysis in BEAST with UCE node constraints.

2. Certh_spp_Unconstrained.xml
A .xml file used to run the species-level phylogenetic analysis in BEAST without any node constraints.

3. Certhioidea_Charsets_v4.txt
A .txt file that includes the locus-specific character sets used in the species-level RAxML analyses.

4. Certhioidea_concatenated_v4.nex
A NEXUS-formatted sequence data file of the concatenated sequence matrix used in species-level analyses.

5. Certhioidea_concatenated_v4.phylogeny
A phylip-formatted sequence data file of the concatenated sequence matrix used in species-level analyses.

6. C...