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Creators/Authors contains: "Lemmon, Alan_R"

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  1. Abstract Rapid species radiations present difficulties for phylogenetic reconstruction due to lack of phylogenetic information and processes such as deep coalescence/incomplete lineage sorting and hybridization. Phylogenomic data can overcome some of these difficulties. In this study, we use anchored hybrid enrichment (AHE) nuclear phylogenomic data and mitochondrial genomes recovered from AHE bycatch with several concatenated and coalescent approaches to reconstruct the poorly resolved radiation of the New Zealand cicada species in the generaKikihiaDugdale andMaoricicadaDugdale. Compared with previous studies using only three to five Sanger‐sequenced genes, we find increased resolution across our phylogenies, but several branches remain unresolved due to topological conflict among genes. Some nodes that are strongly supported by traditional support measures like bootstraps and posterior probabilities still show significant gene and site concordance conflict. In addition, we find strong mito‐nuclear discordance; likely the result of interspecific hybridization events in the evolutionary history ofKikihiaandMaoricicada. 
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  2. Abstract An important goal of conservation genetics is to determine if the viability of small populations is reduced by a loss of adaptive variation due to genetic drift. Here, we assessed the impact of drift and selection on direct measures of adaptive variation (toxin loci encoding venom proteins) in the eastern massasauga rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus), a threatened reptile that exists in small isolated populations. We estimated levels of individual polymorphism in 46 toxin loci and 1,467 control loci across 12 populations of this species, and compared the results with patterns of selection on the same loci following speciation ofS. catenatusand its closest relative, the western massasauga (S. tergeminus). Multiple lines of evidence suggest that both drift and selection have had observable impacts on standing adaptive variation. In support of drift effects, we found little evidence for selection on toxin variation within populations and a significant positive relationship between current levels of adaptive variation and long‐ and short‐term estimates of effective population size. However, we also observed levels of directional selection on toxin loci among populations that are broadly similar to patterns predicted from interspecific selection analyses that pre‐date the effects of recent drift, and that functional variation in these loci persists despite small short‐term effective sizes. This suggests that much of the adaptive variation present in populations may represent an example of “drift debt,” a nonequilibrium state where present‐day levels of variation overestimate the amount of functional genetic diversity present in future populations. 
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  3. Abstract Anchored hybrid enrichment (AHE) has emerged as a powerful tool for uncovering the evolutionary relationships within many taxonomic groups. AHE probe sets have been developed for a variety of insect groups, though none have yet been shown to be capable of simultaneously resolving deep and very shallow (e.g., intraspecific) divergences. In this study, we present NOC1, a new AHE probe set (730 loci) for Lepidoptera specialized for tiger moths and assess its ability to deliver phylogenetic utility at all taxonomic levels. We test the NOC1 probe set with 142 individuals from 116 species sampled from all the major lineages of Arctiinae (Erebidae), one of the most diverse groups of noctuoids (>11 000 species) for which no well‐resolved, strongly supported phylogenetic hypothesis exists. Compared to previous methods, we generally recover much higher branch support (BS), resulting in the most well‐supported, well‐resolved phylogeny of Arctiinae to date. At the most shallow‐levels, NOC1 confidently resolves species‐level and intraspecific relationships and potentially uncovers cryptic species diversity within the genusHypoprepia. We also implement a ‘sensitivity analysis’ to explore different loci combinations and site sampling strategies to determine whether a reduced probe set can yield results similar to those of the full probe set. At both deep and shallow levels, only 50–175 of the 730 loci included in the complete NOC1 probe set were necessary to resolve most relationships with high confidence, though only when the more rapidly evolving sites within each locus are included. This demonstrates that AHE probe sets can be tailored to target fewer loci without a significant reduction in BS, allowing future studies to incorporate more taxa at a lower per‐sample sequencing cost. NOC1 shows great promise for resolving long‐standing taxonomic issues and evolutionary questions within arctiine lineages, one of the most speciose clades within Lepidoptera. 
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