Protein-encoding ultraconserved elements provide a new phylogenomic perspective of Oestroidea flies (Diptera, Calyptratae)

The diverse superfamily Oestroidea with more than 15,000 known species includes among others, blow flies, flesh flies, bot flies, and the diverse tachinid flies. Oestroidea exhibit strikingly divergent morphological and ecological traits, but even with a variety of data sources and inferences there is no consensus on the relationships among major Oestroidea lineages. Phylogenomic inferences derived from targeted enrichment of ultraconserved elements or UCEs have emerged as a promising method for resolving difficult phylogenetic problems at varying timescales. To reconstruct phylogenetic relationships among families of Oestroidea, we obtained UCE loci exclusively derived from the transcribed portion of the genome making them suitable for larger and more integrative phylogenomic studies using other genomic and transcriptomic resources. We analysed datasets containing 37–2,077 UCE loci from 98 representatives of all oestroid families (except Ulurumyiidae and Mystacinobiidae) and seven caly...