Rapid postglacial diversification and long-term stasis within the songbird genus Junco: phylogeographic and phylogenomic evidence

Natural systems composed of closely-related taxa that vary in the degree of phenotypic divergence and geographic isolation, provide an opportunity to investigate the rate of phenotypic diversification and the relative roles of selection and drift in driving lineage formation. The genus Junco (Aves: Emberizidae) of North America includes parapatric northern forms that are markedly divergent in plumage pattern and color, in contrast to geographically isolated southern populations in remote areas that show moderate phenotypic divergence. Here, we quantify patterns of phenotypic divergence in morphology and plumage color, and use mitochondrial DNA genes, a nuclear intron, and genome-wide SNPs to reconstruct the demographic and evolutionary history of the genus to infer relative rates of evolutionary divergence among lineages. We found that geographically isolated populations have evolved independently for hundreds of thousands of years despite little differentiation in phenotype, in sharp c...