Meeting Abstract
Effective conservation and management decisions require robust species hypotheses. The increasing use of next generation sequencing and reduced genome representation methods helps provide a strong scientific foundation for these decisions for even relatively unstudied non-model organisms. Here we take this approach and use restriction associated DNA sequences (RADseq) to evaluate species delimitation in the butterfly genus Speyeria. Speyeria butterflies are a group of conservation interest across North America comprised of several putative taxa with designations ranging from species of concern to federally endangered. Recent phylogenetic analyses have not confirmed all species to be monophyletic, and inter- and intraspecific relationships require further study. Given that this is a recent and rapid radiation, genome wide data hold promise for elucidating species hypotheses and phylogenetic patterns, as well as paving the way for analyses below the species level. We analyze multiple exemplars from each Speyeria species and generate species trees from randomly drawn loci from which we compute a consensus tree to evaluate species lineages and interspecific and intraspecific relationships.
