The lakes of northern Minnesota are home to many similar species of damselflies of the genus Enallagma. These species have apparently undergone speciation from ancestral stock since the last glacial retreat about 10,000 years ago. Sequencing which of the following would probably be most useful in sorting out evolutionary relationships among these closely related species?

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Mitochondrial DNA is frequently used in molecular systematics to study evolutionary relationships between closely related species, as it tends to evolve rapidly and can be easily sequenced. This makes it a useful tool for differentiating between recently diverged species, as is likely the case with the Enallagma damselflies. The other options, such as conserved regions of nuclear DNA and ribosomal RNA, may be useful for different types of evolutionary studies. Amino acids in proteins may also be useful, but tend to be more useful for studying deeper evolutionary relationships.

The Lakes of Northern Minnesota Are Home to Many Similar