A phylogenomic approach to understanding Apocritan evolution

Superfamily relationships within Hymenoptera have been exceedingly difficult to resolve using conventional morphological and molecular markers. Genomic scale methods offer an alternative approach to phylogenetic reconstruction, typically overcoming incongruence between single-gene trees and providing increased nodal support. We sampled over 2000 clones from cDNA libraries from 7 disparate Hymenopteran taxa. These EST-derived markers were used to build a large concatenated multi-gene data matrix for a subset of taxa across the Hymenoptera. We present a robust and well-supported hypothesis of Hymenopteran evolution at the level of superfamily and clarify several long-contested relationships among putative infraorders within Apocrita. Our results demonstrate the power of a phylogenomic approach for resolving deep evolutionary divergences within the Hymenoptera. Additionally, we show how EST-derived markers analyzed in a phylogenomic perspective offer a complimentary technique to more traditional phylogenetic methods that utilize denser taxon sampling.