Higher‐level phylogeny of longhorn beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomeloidea) inferred from mitochondrial genomes

Abstract

Cerambycidae (longhorn beetles) and related families in the superfamily Chrysomeloidea are important components of forest ecosystems and play a key role in nutrient cycling and pollination. Using full mitochondrial genomes and dense taxon sampling, the phylogeny of Chrysomeloidea with a focus on Cerambycidae and allied families was explored. We used 151 mitochondrial genomes (75 newly sequenced) covering all families and 29 subfamilies of Chrysomeloidea. Our results reveal that (i) Chrysomelidae (leaf beetles) are sister to all other chrysomeloid families; (ii) Cerambycidae sensu stricto (s. s.) is polyphyletic due to the inclusion of other families that split Cerambycidae into a ‘lamiine’ clade comprising Lepturinae sensu lato (s. l.) + (Lamiinae + Spondylidinae) and a ‘cerambycine’ clade comprising Dorcasominae + (Cerambycinae + Prioninae s. l.); (iii) the subfamilies within the two clades of Cerambycidae s. s. were monophyletic, except for the placement of Necydalinae nested in Lepturinae, and the placement of Parandrinae within Prioninae (now considered as tribes Necydalini and Parandrini, respectively); (iv) smaller families were grouped into two major clades: one composed of Disteniidae+Vesperidae and the other composed of Orsodacnidae + (Megalopodidae + Oxypeltidae); (v) relationships among the four major clades were poorly supported but were resolved as ((cerambycines + (Disteniidae + Vesperidae) + Orsodacnidae + (Megalopodidae + Oxypeltidae)) + lamiines. Divergence time analyses estimated that Chrysomeloidea originated ca. 154.1 Mya during the late Jurassic, and most subfamilies of Cerambycidae originated much earlier than subfamilies of Chrysomelidae. The diversification of families within Chrysomeloidea was largely coincident with the radiation of angiosperms during the Early Cretaceous.

Phylogenetic placement of the enigmatic longhorned beetle Vesperoctenus flohri Bates (Vesperidae) and a first description of its female internal structures

“…) are identical to those ofHaddad et al (2018; their fig.2), with only minor differences in nodal support; also the original cerambycid subfamilial classification ofHaddad et al (2018) is retained (additional support has been in the meantime obtained for placing Necydalinae and Parandrinae as ingroups of Lepturinae and Prioninae, respectively, e.g. inNie et al 2021). Vesperoctenus flohri, the focus of our study, is recovered within the cerambyciform family Vesperidae, sister to Vesperus (Vesperinae), with maximal nodal support.…”

“…Recently, phylogenomic studies have greatly improved our understanding of Coleoptera systematics and evolution (e.g., Haddad et al 2018;Shin et al 2018;McKenna et al 2019;Vasilikopoulos et al 2019). Studies of cerambyciform systematics and evolution have also been gaining momentum (e.g., Haddad and McKenna 2016;Haddad et al 2018;Lee and Lee 2020;Souza et al 2020a, b;Nie et al 2021). In this study, we sought to determine the phylogenetic placement of Vesperoctenus using phylogenomic data, since morphology alone has failed to provide a clear answer to this.…”

“…It would be difficult to list any synapomorphies of the Philinae because of the above mentioned generalized plesiomorphic morphology of some philine taxa. However, Philinae were represented by three relatively different genera (Philus, Spiniphilus Lin & Bi and Mantitheus, the latter with brachelytrous micropterous females resembling females of some Vesperus) in the mitochondrial phylogeny of Nie et al (2021) and formed a strongly supported monophyletic clade sister to Vesperus. Potential synapomorphies of the Vesperinae (Vesperoctenus and Vesperus) include several characters:…”

Click Beetle Mitogenomics with the Definition of a New Subfamily Hapatesinae from Australasia (Coleoptera: Elateridae)

“…Possibly, the low variability and compositional heterogeneity caused an aberrant topology recovered by individual analyses. Recent phylogenetic studies using mitochondrial genomes demonstrated that the site-heterogeneous mixture model (CAT-GTR model) implemented in PhyloBayes tends to reduce tree reconstruction artifacts [ 34 , 70 , 71 ]. Our BI analyses used site heterogeneous models and the results show their power for resolving phylogenetic relationships with Elateridae and provide for an additional example that model adequacy is critical for accurate tree reconstruction in mitochondrial phylogenomics [ 34 ].…”

The complete mitochondrial genome of Monochamus dubius Gahan (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

“…Chrysomeloidea cover the two largest families, Cerambycidae (longhorn beetles) and Chrysomelidae (leaf beetles), each with more than 30,000 species and about a dozen subfamilies (Nie et al 2020). Relationships among subfamilies of Chrysomelidae have been clarified over the past two decades (Reid 2000;Ge et al 2011).…”