Despite genome scale analyses, high-level relationships among Neoaves birds remain contentious. The placements of the Neoaves superorders are notoriously difficult to resolve because they involve deep splits followed by short internodes. Using our approach, we investigate whether filtering UCE loci on their phylogenetic signal to noise ratio helps to resolve key nodes in the Neoaves tree of life. We find that our analysis of data sets filtered for high signal to noise ratio results in topologies that are inconsistent with unfiltered results but that are congruent with whole-genome analyses. These relationships include the Columbea + Passerea sister relationship and the Phaethontimorphae + Aequornithia sister relationship. We also find increased statistical support for more recent nodes (i.e. the Pelecanidae + Ardeidae sister relationship, the Eucavitaves clade, and the Otidiformes + Musophagiformes sister relationship). We also find instances where support is reduced for well-established clades, possibly due to the removal of sites with moderate signal-to-noise ratio. Our results suggest that filtering on the basis of signal to noise ratio is a useful tool for resolving problematic splits in phylogenomic data sets.

Ultraconserved elements (UCEs) have become popular markers in phylogenomic studies because of their cost effectiveness and their potential to resolve problematic phylogenetic relationships. Although UCE datasets typically contain a much larger number of loci and sites than more traditional datasets of PCR-amplified, single-copy, protein coding genes, a fraction of UCE sites are expected to be part of a nearly invariant core, and the relative performance of UCE datasets versus protein coding gene datasets is poorly understood. Here we use phylogenetic informativeness (PI) to compare the resolving power of multi-locus and UCE datasets in a sample of percomorph fishes with sequenced genomes (genome-enabled). We compare three data sets: UCE core regions, flanking sequence adjacent to the UCE core and a set of ten protein coding genes commonly used in fish systematics. We found the net informativeness of UCE core and flank regions to be roughly ten-fold and 100-fold more informative than that of the protein coding genes. On a per locus basis UCEs and protein coding genes exhibited similar levels of phylogenetic informativeness. Our results suggest that UCEs offer enormous potential for resolving relationships across the percomorph tree of life.