TY - JOUR T1 - Rapid Insect Radiations Expose Predictable Errors When Gene Trees Are Interpreted Directly as Species Histories A1 - Kristian Eriksen A1 - Solveig Berg A1 - Magnus Dahl JF - Entomological Research Letters JO - Entomol Res Lett SN - 3108-639X Y1 - 2021 VL - 1 IS - 2 DO - 10.51847/DXFePla01s SP - 51 EP - 60 N2 - Rapid insect radiations are difficult phylogenetic problems not simply because internal branches are short, but because several biological and analytical processes can produce the same visible symptom: discordant gene trees. This phylogenetic framework argues that a recurrent error occurs when an estimated gene tree is read directly as a species history. The framework separates four inferential objects—observed molecular characters, gene-copy genealogies, estimated gene trees, and species-history hypotheses—and classifies discordance by where it enters that chain. Incomplete lineage sorting and introgression are treated as biological generators of discordance; sampling, orthology, paralogy, sequence fragmentation, and upstream processing can distort the evidence supplied to tree estimation; and model misspecification can turn uncertainty into directional error. The framework therefore treats discordance as a diagnostic problem requiring competing explanations rather than as a label with a unique cause. Its principal contribution is a proposed error-source architecture for rapid insect radiations that preserves uncertainty, taxonomic boundaries, and the distinction between phylogenetic support and historical truth. It is intended as an interpretive framework, not a validated classifier of error causes. UR - https://esvpub.com/article/rapid-insect-radiations-expose-predictable-errors-when-gene-trees-are-interpreted-directly-as-specie-lo1bkzmiat4ym7x ER -