Molecular phylogeny of fungus gnats (Diptera: Mycetophilidae) revisited: position of Manotinae, Metanepsiini, and other enigmatic taxa as inferred from multigene analysis

Abstract

The phylogeny of selected genera from four subfamilies of fungus gnats (Diptera: Mycetophilidae) – Manotinae, Leiinae, Sciophilinae and Gnoristinae (including Metanepsiini) – is reconstructed based on the combined analysis of five mitochondrial (12S, 16S, COI, COII, cytB) and two nuclear (28S, ITS2) gene markers. Results of the different analyses all support Manotinae as a monophyletic group, with Leiinae as the sister group. Allactoneura DeMeijere is nested in the monophyletic and strongly supported clade of Leiinae. The tribe Metanepsiini is revealed as paraphyletic and the genera Metanepsia Edwards and Chalastonepsia Søli do not appear to be closely related. The genera Docosia Winnertz, Ectrepesthoneura Enderlein, Novakia Strobl and Syntemna Winnertz were placed with a group of genera included traditionally in the Gnoristinae. The monophyly of Dziedzickia Johannsen and Phthinia Winnertz is not supported. The genera of Sciophilinae (excluding Paratinia Mik but including Eudicrana Loew) form a monophyletic group in the Bayesian model.

The Mycetophila ruficollis Meigen (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) group in Europe: elucidating species delimitation with COI and ITS2 sequence data

“…The comparison of the three regions sequenced from two genes revealed that the variation in the barcoding region of COI was slightly higher than in the following stretch of comparable length. The latter has been widely used in taxonomic studies on fungus gnats, focusing on higher taxonomic levels (Rindal et al 2009, Ševčík et al 2013). Here we showed its applicability also for species discrimination.…”

Molecular phylogeny of the megadiverse insect infraorder Bibionomorphasensu lato(Diptera)

“…For this reason, molecular approaches became the focus of Sciaroidea researchers, which seems natural considering that new characters are needed to advance the phylogenetic discussion and that the rapid development of molecular methods has raised great expectations. Molecular approaches have only recently been applied to phylogenetic studies of Bibionomorpha, but these studies focused either on certain subtaxa (e.g., Rindal, Søli & Bachmann, 2009; Ševčík, Kaspřák & Tóthová, 2013; Ševčík et al, 2014; Shin et al, 2013) or had a major focus beyond the infraorder (Bertone, Courtney & Wiegmann, 2008; Wiegmann et al, 2011; Beckenbach, 2012). As a consequence, taxon sampling was not adjusted to tackle the issues specific to Bibionomorpha.…”

Two new Neuratelia Rondani (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) species from Western Palaearctic: a case of limited congruence between morphology and DNA sequence data

“…Rokas et al 2002, Wilkerson et al 2004, Haarto and Ståhls 2014). While COI has successfully been used in studies on fungus gnat taxonomy (Martinsson et al 2011, Rindal et al 2009b, Ševčík et al 2013, 2014) and ecology (Põldmaa et al 2015), ITS2 has been incorporated only in a few studies (Ševčík et al 2013, 2014). …”

“…Though in recent years nucleotide data have been implemented to address the phylogeny of this group (e.g. Rindal et al 2009a, 2009b, Ševčík et al 2013, 2014), to associate sexes of one species (Kurina et al 2011) and in population genetic studies (Dörge et al 2014). Hippa and Ševčík (2014) provided mitochondrial 12S and 16S sequences in the description of Nepaletricha sigma .…”