Comparison of target-capture and restriction-site associated DNA sequencing for phylogenomics: a test in cardinalid tanagers (Aves, genus: Piranga)

Restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) and target capture of specific genomic regions, such as ultraconserved elements (UCEs), are emerging as two of the most popular methods for phylogenomics using reduced-representation genomic datasets. These two methods were designed to target different evolutionary timescales: RAD-seq was designed for population-genomic level questions and UCEs for deeper phylogenetics. The utility of both datasets to infer phylogenies across a variety of taxonomic levels has not been adequately compared within the same taxonomic system. Additionally, the effects of uninformative gene trees on species tree analyses (for target capture data) have not been explored. Here, we utilize RAD-seq and UCE data to infer a phylogeny of the bird genus Piranga. The group has a range of divergence dates (0.5 my – 6 my), contains eleven recognized species, and lacks a resolved phylogeny. We compared two species tree methods for the RAD-seq data and six species tree ...