More than 95% of phytophagous true bug (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) species belong to four superfamilies: Miroidea (Cimicomorpha), Pentatomoidea, Coreoidea, and Lygaeoidea (all Pentatomomorpha). These iconic groups of highly diverse, overwhelmingly phytophagous insects include several economically prominent agricultural and silvicultural pest species, though their evolutionary history has not yet been well resolved. In particular, superfamily-and family-level phylogenetic relationships of these four lineages have remained controversial, and the divergence times of some crucial nodes for phytophagous true bugs have hitherto been little known, which hampers a better understanding of the evolutionary processes and patterns of phytophagous insects. In the present study, we used 150 species and concatenated nuclear and mitochondrial protein-coding genes and rRNA genes to infer the phylogenetic relationships within the Terheteroptera (Cimicomorpha + Pentatomomorpha) and estimated their divergence times. Our results support the monophyly of Cimicomorpha, Pentatomomorpha, Miroidea, Pentatomoidea, Pyrrhocoroidea, Coreoidea, and Lygaeoidea. The phylogenetic relationships across phytophagous lineages are largely congruent at deep nodes across the analyses based on different datasets and tree-reconstructing methods with just a few exceptions. Estimated divergence times and ancestral state reconstructions for feeding habit indicate that phytophagous true bugs explosively radiated in the Early Cretaceous-shortly after the angiosperm radiation-with the subsequent diversification of the most speciose clades (Mirinae, Pentatomidae, Coreinae, and Rhyparochromidae) in the Late Cretaceous.

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Main observation and conclusion Oxidative dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene is considered as an alternative route to styrene because of its exothermic and irreversible reaction nature, but encounters low styrene selectivity due to the deep‐oxidation over metal oxide‐based catalysts. Herein, we reported that a metal‐free boron‐based catalyst consisting of boron phosphate and boron nitride (BPO4/BN) exhibited high activity and selectivity in oxidative dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene. High selectivity of styrene (95.1%) was achieved at 27.7% ethylbenzene conversion level over the optimized BPO4/BN catalyst. The tetra‐coordinated boron (BO4) species of BPO4 was speculated to be responsible for the ODH of ethylbenzene, and a synergistic effect between BPO4 and BN can remarkably improve the catalytic performance of the BPO4/BN catalyst. The optimized BPO4/BN catalyst showed a higher styrene formation rate of 4.0 mmol gcat−1·h−1, compared individually to BPO4 (2.8 mmol·gcat–1·h–1) and BN (0.5 mmol·gcat–1·h–1).