Welcome to the American Ornithological Society 2018 Annual Conference. We are pleased to have you join us at the lovely Hilton El Conquistador Resort in Tucson, AZ.
Islands are natural barriers that prevent gene flow between populations and promote allopatric diversification. Birds in the South Pacific are an excellent model to explore the interplay between isolation and gene flow due to the region's extensive archipelagos and relatively well characterized avian communities. The Wattled Honeyeater complex (Foulehaio spp.) comprises three allopatric taxa that are widespread and common across Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Wallis and Futuna. Previous work using mitochondrial DNA found three well-differentiated lineages that are up to 8\% diverged, but questions remain about what, if any, genetic structure exists within the nuclear genome of Foulehaio. Here, we explore patterns of gene flow within and between these lineages using a dataset of ultraconserved elements (UCEs). We sampled 134 individuals (132 ingroup plus two outgroup taxa: Xanthotis provocator and Gymnomyza viridis) from 21 islands across the entire range of Foulehaio. Our 95\% complete datamatrix comprised 1,341 UCEs (mean contig length = 1,077 bp; total alignment = 1.4 Mb) from which we called SNPs. We used tree-based and population genetic approaches in a multispecies coalescent framework to study patterns of gene flow within Foulehaio. We found strong support for three lineages of Foulehaio, each pertaining to previously identified mitochondrial lineages (F. carunculatus, F. procerior, and F. taviuensis). There is minimal gene flow between these lineages, supporting treatment as three species; however, we detected interesting patterns of gene flow between populations of F. carunculatus, the most widespread taxon from Eastern Fiji to Samoa.
