Exploring Component Stability Using Life‐Stage Concordance In Sabethine Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract

Morphological characters from sabethine mosquitoes were coded from larvae, pupae and adults, and life-stage partitions were evaluated to determine the contribution of each to the topology of a combined cladogram. Initial tests failed to find congruence between characters partitioned by life stage. However, when components from the combined analysis were tested using reduced taxon sets, a high degree of concordance between partitions was observed. A procedure for assessing individual life-stage contribution is employed, in which exhaustive searches are used to explore all possible arrangements for each of the selected components. Seven of the 10 components examined were able to recover the combined topology with a reduced taxon set. Congruent arrangements of taxa were typically observed for two or more life stages, although partitioned data were less resolved and frequently included aberrant topologies (those not supported by other partitioned or combined reduced taxon tree sets). In addition, none of the partitioned data sets gave robust results for all tests, suggesting that studies which emphasize character data from single life stages may support misleading arrangements of taxa. One component on the combined cladogram was not supported by any of the life-stage partitions when analysed separately. These results are complementary to "total evidence" approach, and demonstrate that partitions of data are useful for examining suits of characters which may cause some components of the "total evidence" tree to appear unstable.

Phylogenetic relationships among the Nymphalidae (Lepidoptera) inferred from partial sequences of thewinglessgene

“…The results presented here are stable to the extent that the inferred MP topology is largely selfconsistent under the implied weights (Judd 1998). In general, SAW reinforced the groups implied by the data in the MP tree.…”

“…Unless SAW yields a subset of the MP cladograms, the results of the respective analyses are not comparable by quantitative means because the two weighting schemes rely on di¡erent philosophical interpretations of the parsimony criterion. The most parsimonious (MP) and SAW trees di¡ered in this study and are compared qualitatively here by assessment of topological congruence (Judd 1998).…”

“…It is currently beyond the scope of any single study to incorporate all the species and it is even impractical to examine representatives of each putative genus. However, as noted by Wheeler (1992) and Judd (1998), appropriate sampling of taxa is fundamental to the inference of stable phylogenetic hypotheses. I have therefore sampled the diversity of the nymphalid butter£ies rather intensively, obtaining taxa considered to be relevant to higher-level patterns of hierarchical grouping based on the most recent and comprehensive classi¢cation (Harvey 1991).…”

Phylogenetic relationships and historical biogeography of tribes and genera in the subfamily Nymphalinae (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

“…We evaluated the stability ( sensu Wheeler, 1995; Judd, 1998; Giribet, 2003) of clades inferred for the equally weighted data set to different character‐state transformation weighting assumptions under parsimony searches using PAUP*. We weighted transversions 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 times transitions for the combined data set.…”

Biological Systematics in the Evo-Devo era

“…-objectively limited range of variation, compared with characters only displayed by the adult -think of copulatory organs and secondary sexual characters in animals, or flower and fruit traits in flowering plants -inadequate presence of non-adult specimens in collections, except for select groups such as amphibiotic insects -lack of information about the relationships between stages (what is the adult of this larva, or juvenile, and vice versa) -lacking or limited interest in a precise identification of non-adult specimens -scattered but disquieting evidence that juveniles or larvae may eventually suggest a different pattern of relationships than the corresponding adults (e.g., brassoline nymphalids (Penz et al 2013) and chalcosiine zygaenids (Yen et al 2005) among the Lepidoptera; Staphyliniformia (Beutel & Leschen 2005) and melolonthine scarabs (Allsopp & Lambkin 2006) among the Coleoptera; 'nematocerans' (Oosterbroek & Courtney 1995), sabethine mosquitoes (Judd 1998) and sepsids (Meier 1996) among the Diptera; see also a critical discussion in Meier & Lim (2009)). The problem is worsened by the lack of a sound theoretical background against which to look for a satisfactory resolution of this conflict…”