A parsimony-based molecular phylogeny for Heliconius

What is it about?

This paper reanalyzes the data from Kozak et al. (2015), showing that they made errors in their data matrix that led to overestimates of mtDNA divergence, and also that the "incongruence" they asserted to exist among the nucelar genes sampled is largely due to extensive patterns of missing data.

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Why is it important?

We show that cladistic methods applied to a concatenated matrix cut through the chaff of model-based gene-tree approaches to reveal underlying patterns of character distribution in this data set. Kozak et al's interpretation of rampant incongruence seems more based on a priori expectations and confirmation bias than on actual evidence.