Dispersal of thermophilic beetles across the intercontinental Arctic forest belt during the early Eocene

Abstract

Massive biotic change occurred during the Eocene as the climate shifted from warm and equable to seasonal and latitudinally stratified. Mild winter temperatures across Arctic intercontinental land bridges permitted dispersal of frost-intolerant groups until the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, while trans-Arctic dispersal in thermophilic groups may have been limited to the early Eocene, especially during short-lived hyperthermals. Some of these lineages are now disjunct between continents of the northern hemisphere. Although Eocene climate change may have been one of the most important drivers of these ancient patterns in modern animal and plant distributions, its particular events are rarely implicated or correlated with group-specific climatic requirements. Here we explored the climatic and geological drivers of a particularly striking Neotropical-Oriental disjunct distribution in the rove beetle Bolitogyrus, a suspected Eocene relict. We integrated evidence from Eocene fossils, distributional and climate data, paleoclimate, paleogeography, and phylogenetic divergence dating to show that intercontinental dispersal of Bolitogyrus ceased in the early Eocene, consistent with the termination of conditions required by thermophilic lineages. These results provide new insight into the poorly known and short-lived Arctic forest community of the Early Eocene and its surviving lineages.

New Data, Old Story: Molecular Data Illuminate the Tribal Relationships among Rove Beetles of the Subfamily Staphylininae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae)

“…The authors argued that these taxonomic changes were justified by the large morphological disparity between tribes and their variable biogeographical distribution. Moreover, they argued that the long evolutionary history of Staphylininae [47] should be reflected by the taxonomy of the family. However, given the now well-established monophyly of Staphylininae in the traditional sense [3], these systematic changes Insects 2020, 11, 164 8 of 12 appear phylogenetically unjustified.…”

Total‐evidence approach reveals an extinct lineage of Paederinae rove beetles from Cretaceous Burmese amber

“…Several papers have applied dating methods to rove beetle phylogenetics (Zhang & Zhou ; Brunke et al . ; Maruyama & Parker ; Song & Ahn ), however in all cases fossil age data were used to calibrate nodes (node‐dating) rather than incorporating fossils and the morphological data contained within them as tips in a combined analysis (tip‐dating).…”

A phylogeny of Xanthopygina (Insecta, Coleoptera) reveals major lineages and the origin of myrmecophily

“…During the last decade, there has been tremendous progress in understanding the phylogenetic relationships within Staphylinini, a megadiverse group of predatory rove beetles with more than 6,000 species (Newton, unpublished database). From the first papers on the molecular phylogenetics of the tribe (Brunke, Chatzimanolis, Metscher, Wolf‐Schwenninger, & Solodovnikov, ; Brunke, Chatzimanolis, Schillhammer, & Solodovnikov, ; Chatzimanolis, ; Chatzimanolis, Cohen, Schomann, & Solodovnikov, ) to more recent ones combining molecular and morphological data (Brunke, Zyla, Yamamoto, & Solodovnikov, in press; Chani‐Posse, Brunke, Chatzimanolis, Schillhammer, & Solodovnikov, ; Schillhammer & Brunke, ; Żyła & Solodovnikov, ), much progress has been made towards our understanding of relationships within and between subtribes, ages of lineages and the phylogenetic placement of fossils.…”