Molecular phylogeny of the horse flies: a framework for renewing tabanid taxonomy

Abstract

Horse flies, family Tabanidae, are the most diverse family-level clade of bloodsucking insects, but their phylogeny has never been thoroughly explored using molecular data. Most adult female Tabanidae feed on nectar and on the blood of various mammals. Traditional horse fly classification tends towards large heterogeneous taxa, which impede much-needed taxonomic work. To guide renewed efforts in the systematics of horse flies and their relatives, we assembled a dataset of 110 exemplar species using nucleotide data from four genes -mitochondrial CO1, and nuclear 28S, CAD and AATS. All commonly recognized tribes in Tabanidae are represented, along with outgroups in Tabanomorpha. The phylogeny is reconstructed using Bayesian inference, and divergence times are estimated using Bayesian relaxed clock methods with time constraints from tabanid fossils. Our results show Athericidae strongly supported as the lineage most closely related to Tabanidae, and Pangoniinae and Tabaninae as monophyletic lineages. However, Chrysopsinae is nonmonophyletic, with strong support for both a nonmonophyletic Bouvieromyiini and for Rhinomyzini as sister to Tabaninae. Only the tribes Philolichini, Chrysopsini, Rhinomyzini and Haematopotini are recovered as monophyletic, although Scionini is monophyletic with exclusion of the peculiar genus Goniops Aldrich. Mycteromyia Philippi and Adersia Austen, two enigmatic genera sometimes placed in separate family-level groups, are recovered inside Pangoniini and Chrysopsini, respectively. Several species-rich genera are not recovered as monophyletic, including Esenbeckia Rondani, Silvius Meigen, Dasybasis Macquart and Tabanus L. Tabanidae likely originated in the Cretaceous, and all major extant groups were present by the early Palaeogene. This newly revised phylogenetic framework for Tabanidae forms the basis for a new assessment of tabanid diversification and provides context for understanding the evolution of trophic specialization in horse flies.

Genomic and transcriptomic resources for assassin flies including the complete genome sequence ofProctacanthus coquilletti(Insecta: Diptera: Asilidae) and 16 representative transcriptomes

“…Horse flies, mydas flies, and apiocerid flies have very different life histories than assassin flies. Almost all females of horse flies are blood-feeders as adults, while males feed on nectar ( Lessard et al, 2013 ; Morita et al, 2015 ). Adult flies of Apioceridae and Mydidae are nectar- or honeydew-feeders ( Norris, 1936 ; Paramonov, 1953 ; Cazier, 1982 ; Wharton, 1982 ), if they feed at all.…”

Overview of the horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae) of South Africa: assessment of major collections for spatiotemporal analysis

“…Morita et al . (2016) suggested that the members of both subfamilies probably form a single tribe, Scepsidini, within Chrysopsinae. In the analysis presented here, all members are treated as Scepsidini for the sake of brevity and not to suggest any taxonomic changes.…”

Taxon sampling to address an ancient rapid radiation: a supermatrix phylogeny of early brachyceran flies (Diptera)

“…These sequences include 14 nuclear protein‐coding genes ( AATS1 , AATS2 , ACE‐1 , CAD , EF1A , G6PD , PEPCK , PER , PGD , PUG , Rhodopsin , SINA , SNF and TPI ), the small and large subunit of nuclear ribosomal RNA genes 18S rRNA and 28S rRNA, two mitochondrial protein‐coding genes ( COI and COII ), and the small and large subunits of the mitochondrial ribosomal RNA genes 12S rRNA and 16S rRNA. Sequences of previously published datasets were collected from the following studies: Yang et al ., ; Winterton et al ., , ; Wiegmann et al ., ; Brammer & von Dohlen, ; Dikow, ; Trautwein et al ., , ; Wiegmann et al ., ; Lessard et al ., ; Winterton & Ware, ; Morita et al ., . All sequences for each study were re‐aligned using MAFFT (Katoh & Standley, ) with the Q‐INS‐i algorithm for the mitochondrial and nuclear rRNA genes, and with the FFT‐NS‐i algorithm for all protein‐coding genes.…”