AFLPs support deep relationships among darters (Percidae: Etheostomatinae) consistent with morphological hypotheses

Recent attention has focused on the efficacy of amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) for resolving deep evolutionary relationships. Here we show that AFLPs provide resolution of deep relationships within the family Percidae that are more consistent with previous morphological hypotheses than are relationships proposed by previous molecular analyses. Despite in silico predictions, we were able to resolve relatively ancient divergences, estimated at >25 MA. We show that the most distantly related species share the fewest fragments, but suggest that large data sets and extensive taxon sampling are sufficient to overcome this obstacle of the AFLP technique for deep divergences. We compare genetic distances estimated from mitochondrial DNA with those from AFLPs and contrast traditional PAUP(*) Nei-Li AFLP genetic distances with a recently proposed method utilizing the Dice equation with constraining nucleotides.