UCE target enrichment of Ponera_exotica_EX1193: CASENT0616250
We employed the UCE approach to phylogenomics (Faircloth et al. 2012, Faircloth et al. 2015, Branstetter et al. 2017), combining target enrichment of Ultra-Conserved Elements (UCEs) with multiplexed, next-generation sequencing. All UCE molecular work was performed following the UCE methodology described in Branstetter et al. (2017). In brief, the following steps were performed: DNA extraction, library preparation, UCE enrichment, sample pooling (100 total samples per sequencing pool), and sequencing on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 (PE125 v4) at the University of Utah genomics core facility. For UCE enrichment we used an ant-customized bait set (ant-specific hym-v2) targeting 2,524 UCE loci common across Hymenoptera (Branstetter et al. 2017). The utility of this bait set to resolve relationships, both deep and shallow, in ants has been demonstrated in several studies (Branstetter et al. 2017, Pierce et al. 2017, Ward and Branstetter 2017, Blaimer et al. 2018).