The principal goals of phylogeographic studies are 1) to identify geographic patterns of genetic subdivision within species, and 2) to identify the underlying processes that create these patterns. In practice most researchers implicitly assume species-level monophyly and sampling for most phylogeographic studies is limited to a single species. If the assumption of monophyletic species is incorrect, then interpretations of data could be incomplete of inaccurate. By contrast, our study adopts a thorough ‘congeneric phylogeographic’ approach by intensively sampling all five recognized species of the North American Cicindela sylvatica L. group to evaluate the historical and contemporary factors that may have driven speciation/ diversification in this group. Beetle specimens were obtained from 130 sampling localities across North America, encompassing the collective ranges of all taxa. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial sequences from 514 individuals revealed all nominal taxa to be extensively para- or polyphyletic. Nonetheless, strongly supported phylogeographic clades were recovered. This talk evaluates alternative explanations for these patterns, which were observable only by adopting the sampling strategies called for by congeneric phylogeography.