Combined-evidence analyses of ultraconserved elements and morphological data: an empirical example in iguanian lizards

Genomic datasets generated by next-generation sequencing are increasingly prevalent in phylogenetics, but morphological data are required to phylogenetically place fossils, corroborate molecular hypotheses, and date phylogenies. Combined-evidence analyses provide an integrative assessment of tree topology. However, no attempt has been made to simultaneously analyze next-generation genomic datasets and morphological data, and the future of morphology in the context of genomic data is uncertain. I conducted combined-evidence analyses that include genomic and morphological datasets, specifically, with ultraconserved elements and two morphological matrices. In unweighted maximum likelihood and Bayesian combined-evidence analyses, morphological signal was dwarfed by the ultraconserved elements, and some node support values were reduced relative to ultraconserved element-only analyses. Increasing the weight of morphological characters allowed those data to influence the tree, but weighting su...