Abstract
In the early days of mitochondrial DNA sequencing, there was the naive expectation that genetic clades would generally correspond well to named species. Furthermore there was hope that deep mitochondrial lineages within species would generally indicate the presence of cryptic species.
However, there are now thousands of documented cases of mitochondrial paraphyly - where individuals are more closely related in mtDNA to some heterospecifics than to some conspecifics. Furthermore, there is an increasing number of well-documented cases of deep mitochondrial lineages that seem to be sympatric and freely interbreeding. Our trans-Atlantic collaboration is focused on determining whether two such cases - Common Redstarts and Common Ravens - represent uncommon examples of "speciation in reverse".
The talk will focus on the complex mitochondrial story in ravens in western North America, and will conclude with our plans for testing alternative explanations for this surprising pattern.
