Sialidae (alderflies) is a family of the holometabolous insect order Megaloptera, with ca. 75 extant species in eight genera distributed worldwide. Alderflies are a group of “living fossils” with a long evolutionary history. The oldest fossil attributed to Sialidae dates back to the Early Jurassic period. Further, the global distribution of modern‐day species shows a remarkably disjunctive pattern. However, due to the rareness of most species and scarcity of comprehensive taxonomic revisions, the phylogeny of Sialidae remains largely unexplored, and the present classification system is in great need of renewal. Here we reconstruct the first phylogeny for Sialidae worldwide based on the most comprehensive sampling and broadest morphological data ever presented for this group of insects. All Cenozoic alderflies belong to a monophyletic clade, which may also include the Early Jurassic genus †Dobbertinia, and the Late Jurassic genus †Sharasialis is their putative sister taxon. Two subfamilies of Sialidae are proposed, namely †Sharasialinae subfam. nov. and Sialidinae. Austrosialis is the sister of all other extant genera, an assemblage which comprises three monophyletic lineages: the Stenosialis lineage, the Ilyobius lineage, and the Sialis lineage. The revised classification of Sialidae is composed of 12 valid genera and 87 valid species. Ilyobius and Protosialis are recognized as valid generic names, while Nipponosialis is treated as a synonym of Sialis. Reconstruction of the ancestral area proposes a global distribution of alderflies in Pangaea before their diversification. The generic diversification of alderflies might have occurred before the breakup of Pangaea, but the divergence of some lineages or genera was probably promoted by the splitting of this supercontinent.

No abstract

Summary Males of the Fishfly Parachauliodes japonicus (McLachlan) produce sperm in bundles. Each bundle consists of hundreds of sperm with their heads agglutinated. At copulation, on average 500 bundles are packed in a single spermatophore which is attached externally to the female genitalia. The bundles swim forward by synchronous flagellate movements in viscous seminal fluids and finally enter a spermatheca of the female. Females detach the spermatophore without guarding by the male; males guard the spermatophore for 5 h. 2. In this study, the effects of sperm-bundle size and medium viscosity on their swimming velocities were examined. As sperm-bundle mass increased, the amount of time it took to move a unit length decreased. As viscosity increased, those sperm-bundles with greater mass moved faster than sperm-bundles with less mass. 3. The distance sperm move seems to be longer in P. japonicus than in most other insects that ejaculate directly or place the spermatophore internally in the female storage organs. Thus, large sperm-bundles may be an advantage for sperm of P. japonicus who move over a long distance in a viscous environment.

Many male animals have evolved exaggerated traits that they use in combat with rival males to gain access to females and secure their reproductive success. But some male animals invest in nuptial gifts that gains them access to females. Both these reproductive strategies are costly in that resources are needed to produce the weapon or nuptial gift. In closely related species where both weapons and nuptial gifts are present, little is known about the potential evolutionary trade-off faced by males that have these traits. In this study, we use dobsonflies (order Megaloptera, family Corydalidae, subfamily Corydalinae) to examine the presence and absence of enlarged male weapons versus nuptial gifts within and among species. Many dobsonfly species are sexually dimorphic, and males possess extremely enlarged mandibles that they use in battles, whereas in other species, males produce large nuptial gifts that increase female fecundity. In our study, we show that male accessory gland size strongly correlates with nuptial gift size and that when male weapons are large, nuptial gifts are small and vice versa. We mapped weapons and nuptial gifts onto a phylogeny we constructed of 57 species of dobsonflies. Our among-species comparison shows that large nuptial gift production evolved in many species of dobsonfly but is absent from those with exaggerated weapons. This pattern supports the potential explanation that the trade-off in resource allocation between weapons and nuptial gifts is important in driving the diversity of male mating strategies seen in the dobsonflies, whereas reduced male-male competition in the species producing large spermatophores could be an alternative explanation on their loss of male weapons. Our results shed new light on the evolutionary interplay of multiple sexually selected traits in animals.

No abstract