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Lineage diversity in a widely distributed New World songbird, the House Wren

Klicka, John1; Epperly, Kevin1; Smith, Brain2; Spellman, Garth3; Chaves, Jaime4; Escalante, Patricia5; Canales-del-Castillo, Ricardo6; Witt, Christopher7; Zink, Robert8

Published Sep 04, 2025 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5dv41nsb5

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Abstract

We explored the evolutionary radiation in the House Wren complex (Troglodytes aedon and allies), the most widely distributed passerine species in the New World. The complex, classified into as many as 25 subspecies and five species, has been the source of ongoing taxonomic debate. To evaluate this extensive phenotypic variation in the House Wren complex from a genomic perspective, we collected 81,182 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from restriction site associated loci (RADseq) and mtDNA from samples representing the taxonomic and geographic diversity of the complex. Both datasets reveal deep phylogeographic structuring across the complex, but topological relationships revealed several major discrepancies. The trees highlight the evolutionary distinctiveness of eastern and western T. aedon, which were sister in the SNP tree and paraphyletic on the mtDNA tree. The RADseq data reveal a distinct T.brunneicollis group, although STRUCTURE plots show putative admixture between western T. aedon and northern Mexican samples of T. brunneicollis. In the mtDNA tree this introgression resulted in paraphyly of T. brunneicollis/western T. aedon. mtDNA data further show a paraphyletic arrangement of T. musculus on the tree, whereas the SNP tree portrays them as monophyletic. Island taxa are distinct in both data sets, including T. beani (Isla Cozumel), which appears derived from T. musculus in eastern Mexico, and T. sissonii (Isla Socorro) and T. tanneri (Isla Clarión) although the two data sets disagree on their overall phylogenetic placement. Although we had only mtDNA data for T. martinicensis from the Lesser Antilles, we found at least four distinct and paraphyletic taxa from Trinidad, Granada, St. Vincent islands, and Dominica. The House Wren complex showed strong differentiation in both mtDNA and RADseq datasets, with conflicting patterns likely having arisen due to some combination of sex-biased dispersal or selection on mtDNA. The most glaring discrepancies between these two datasets, such as the paraphyly of eastern and western North American House Wrens in the mtDNA tree, present excellent opportunities for follow-up studies on evolutionary mechanisms that underpin phylogeographic patterns.