2001. Phylogenetic utility of different types of molecular data used to infer evolutionary relationships among stalk-eyed flies (Diopsidae). Syst. Biol

Abstract.—A phylogenetic hypothesis of relationships among 33 species of stalk-eyed ies was gen-erated from a molecular data set comprising three mitochondrial and three nuclear gene regions. A combined analysis of all the data equally weighted produced a single most-parsimonious cladogram with relatively strong support at the majority of nodes. The phylogenetic utility of different classes of molecular data was also examined. In particular, using a number of different measures of utility in both a combined and separate analysis framework, we focused on the distinction between mitochon-drial and nuclear genes and between faster-evolving characters and slower-evolving characters. For the rst comparison, by nearly any measure of utility, the nuclear genes are substantially more infor-mative for resolving diopsid relationships than are themitochondrial genes. The nuclear genes exhibit less homoplasy, are less incongruent with one another and with the combined data, and contribute more support to the combined analysis topology than do the mitochondrial genes. Results from the second comparison, however, provide little evidence of a clear difference in utility. Despite indications of rapid divergence and saturation, faster-evolving characters in both the nuclear and mitochondrial data sets still provide substantial phylogenetic signal. In general, inclusion of the more rapidly evolv-ing data consistently improves the congruence among partitions. [Diopsidae; incongruence; nuclea