Historical biogeography of the hyperdiverse hidden snout weevils (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Cryptorhynchinae)

Abstract

The first dated phylogeny of the weevil subfamily Cryptorhynchinae is presented within a framework of Curculionoidea. The inferred pattern and timing of weevil family relationships are generally congruent with previous studies, but our data are the first to suggest a highly supported sister‐group relationship between Attelabidae and Belidae. Our biogeographical inferences suggest that Cryptorhynchinae s.s. originated in the Late Cretaceous (c. 86 Ma) in South America. Within the ‘Acalles group’ and the ‘Cryptorhynchus group’, several independent dispersal events to the Western Palaearctic via the Nearctic occurred in the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene. A second southern route via Antarctica may have facilitated the colonization of Australia in the Late Cretaceous (c. 82 Ma), where a diverse Indo‐Australian clade probably emerged c. 73 Ma. In the Early Eocene (c. 50–55 Ma), several clades independently dispersed from Australia to proto‐New Guinea, i.e. the tribe Arachnopodini s.l., the ‘Rhynchodes group’ and the genus Trigonopterus. New Zealand was first colonized in the Late Palaeocene (c. 60 Ma). Divergence time estimations and biogeographical reconstructions indicate that the colonization of New Guinea is older than expected from current geological reconstructions of the region.

Transgressing Wallace's Line brings hyperdiverse weevils down to earth

“…procurtus, T. crenulatus, T. lampros. this provided a test if the same lineages of potentially higher dispersal ability have colonized islands both to the west and east of New Guinea. As outgroup representatives, we used four species of other Cryptorhynchinae from Australia and New Guinea following the most recent phylogenetic hypotheses for this subfamily (Riedel et al 2016, Letsch et al 2020a. Genomic DNA of all specimens was extracted non-destructively using the DNeasy and NucleoSpin 96 Tissue kits (Qiagen, Hilden; Macherey-Nagel, Düren, Germany).…”

“…We relied on the phylogenetic study of Letsch et al (2020a) on Cryptorhynchinae evolution to calibrate the Trigonopterus phylogeny. The root of the tree was calibrated using the normally distributed 95% highest posterior density (HPD) interval inferred for the 'Indo-Australian clade' in Letsch et al (2020a), which was estimated at 66.8-81.17 million yr ago (Ma), and the crown of Trigonopterus was calibrated with the respective HPD of 47.7-61.14 Ma. Divergence time estimates were performed in the program BEAST v1.10.4 (Suchard et al 2018), using the topology from the best ML tree obtained by IQ-TREE as a fixed input tree.…”

“…Divergence time estimates were performed in the program BEAST v1.10.4 (Suchard et al 2018), using the topology from the best ML tree obtained by IQ-TREE as a fixed input tree. To account for uncertainty in evolutionary rates, uncorrelated lognormal relaxed-clock models were assumed for each partition, with a Birth-death tree model prior, following the best BEAST analyses scheme in Letsch et al (2020a). Substitution model parameters were set according to the ModelFinder results.…”

“…The distributional range of the hyperdiverse weevil genus Trigonopterus of Cryptorhynchinae s.str. (Riedel et al 2016, Letsch et al 2020a extends from Singapore in the west to Samoa in the east, encompassing the entire IAA and West Pacific Islands, with usually narrow endemic species, each occupying a range of less than 100 km in diameter (Tänzler et al 2012, Riedel andNarakusumo 2019). All species are apterous and heavily sclerotized as adults (Van de Kamp et al 2015).…”

Mitochondrial genomes of twelve species of hyperdiverse Trigonopterus weevils

“…We performed 40 steps of one million generations each using a path scheme with a betaQuantile 0.33 (Baele et al, 2012), discarding 25% of each step as burn-in. The tree was calibrated based on the age of the most recent common ancestor (mrca) of Trigonopterus excluding the T. squamosus-, the T. scissops-and the T. bisinuatus-group as estimated by Letsch et al (2020a) and Letsch et al (2020b): mean 45.88 (42.31-48.10) Ma. We implemented this event as a log-normal distribution prior in real space with a mean of 45.88 Ma and standard deviation of 1.5.…”