Hirundo is the most species-rich genus in the swallow family
Hirundinidae, comprising 14 described species (Turner and Rose,
1989; Dickinson, 2003; Turner, 2004). Because this group of aerial
insectivores is characterized by a relatively conservative morphology
that provides few characters with which to explore phylogenetic
relationships, most recent studies of its evolutionary history
have employed molecular markers. Such studies have explored
relationships at both the species and subspecies levels. At the species
level, reconstructions based on mtDNA and nuclear sequences
(Sheldon and Winkler, 1993; Sheldon et al., 2005) showed that the