Cave insects with sex‐reversed genitalia had their most recent common ancestor in West Gondwana (Psocodea: Prionoglarididae: Speleketorinae)

Abstract

The divergence date and ancestral distributional area of the psocid subfamily Speleketorinae, which includes taxa with reversed genitalia (female penis and male vagina of Afrotrogla and Neotrogla, tribe Sensitibillini), were estimated. The most basal divergence of the subfamily (between the North American Speleketor and the tribe Sensitibillini) was estimated to have occurred according to the separation between the North American continent and Gondwana, ca. 175 Ma. The most basal divergence of Sensitibillini (between African Afrotrogla + Sensitibilla and Brazilian Neotrogla) was estimated to have occurred according to the split of West Gondwana (separation between the African and South American continents), ca. 127 Ma. The biome of the ancestral distributional area of Sensitibillini (inland of West Gondwana) is believed to be arid to semi‐arid, which might strengthen the reversed sexual selection and then facilitate the origin of preadaptive features related to the evolution of a female penis. All extant Sensitibillini species inhabit carbonatic caves, but geological evidence suggested independent shifts of these genera to the carbonatic cave habitat in the Tertiary/Quaternary.

New psocids (Psocodea: Prionoglarididae, Psyllipsocidae) from Cretaceous Burmese amber deposits

“…Recently, de Moya et al, (2020) proposed a time-calibrated phylogeny of the crown Psocodea and estimate their arisen to the early Jurassic (de Moya et al, 2020: fig. 1) which is much younger than been previously proposed (e.g., Misof et al 2014;Johnson et al, 2018;Yoshizawa et al, 2019) and may result from the partial integration of the fossil record as calibration points. This Jurassic dating, at most, can only concern the crown group of the J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f extant Psocodea and not its stem group.…”

Evolution of nuptial gifts and its coevolutionary dynamics with male-like persistence traits of females for multiple mating

“…However, since the spermathecal plate of the extant Sensitibillini is a complex structure harboring not only the twin slots for seminal gifts, but also a muscle-driven mechanism to switch seminal flows between them [ 23 ; Fig. 3 c], it has likely evolved gradually from primitive precursors during its long evolutionary history of approximately 50 million years (from 177.5 Mya to 127.2 Mya: [ 53 ]).…”

Trogloregions: delimiting subterranean faunistic identities in Afrotropics and Neotropics

“…Sicarius and Hexophthalma 47 , and Psocoptera, Prionoglarididae: Afrotrogla, Neotrogla, and Sensitibilla 48 ) that are also found in caves, are restricted to the aridest parts of Afro and Neotropical regions. Their distributions are con ned to regions of greater aridity since the vicariance event, when the distribution of their ancestors diverged 47,48 . According to our database, the occurrence of the genera from these two families, for example, occurs largely in the caves of the "Lower San Francisco" and "Etosha" Trogloregions.…”