An empirical test of reduced-representation genomics to inferring species-level phylogenies for two ant groupsAn empirical test of reduced-representation genomics to inferring species-level phylogenies for two ant groups. ant genera (Cephalotes and Polyrhachis)

DNA sequence data generation has traditionally been a significant bottleneck in the production of molecular phylogenies both in terms of time and money. The dramatic drop in cost per base of DNA sequencing since the announcement of the draft version of the human genome in 2001 has made it affordable for small scale labs to produce large molecular datasets of non-model organisms. Further, development of reduced-representation library preparation methods allows for the development of homologous markers well suited for phylogenetic inference. In this study we discuss the technical and financial details of producing a reduced-representation genomic dataset for the resolution of species-level phylogenies of two distantly related ant genera (Cephalotes and Polyrhachis), and then compare our budgets and resulting phylogenies with comparable phylogenies generated in previous studies using the more traditional gene-based approach.