Figure 2.

The resolution and accuracy of phylogeographic inferences increases with increasing DNA sequence information. (ὶ) Limited sequence information results in a largely unresolved phylogeny which provides little power to infer historical demography and migratory history. For example, the direction and timing of migratory events between locations (red or blue) cannot be inferred from unresolved trees if the ancestral location of a clade cannot be reconstructed. (ὶὶ) The ancestral location (blue) can be inferred from fully resolved phylogenies permitting the detection of migration events (from the blue location to red location). Further, the relative timing of migration events can be inferred from the branch lengths of the phylogeny. The accuracy of the inferred direction and timing of migration events depends on the statistical confidence in the reconstructed phylogeny [95, 97].