Phylogeny and evolution of Mesozoic and extant lineages of Histeridae (Coleoptera), with discovery of a new subfamily Antigracilinae from the Lower Cretaceous

Abstract

In order to place a newly discovered species Antigracilus costatus gen. sp. n. from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation (China) and to assess previously unplaced fossil taxa, we investigated the relationships of extant and extinct lineages of Histeridae based on three data sets: (i) 69 morphological characters belonging to 48 taxa (representing all 11 subfamilies and 15 of 17 tribes of modern Histeridae); (ii) partitioned alignment of 6030 bp from downloaded nucleotide sequences (28S, CAD, COI, 18S) of 50 taxa (representing 10 subfamilies and 15 of 17 tribes of modern Histeridae); and (iii) a combined morphological and molecular dataset for 75 taxa. Phylogenetic analyses of the morphology and combined matrices recovered the new Lower Cretaceous taxon as a sister group to remaining Histeridae and it is placed in †Antigracilinae subfam. n. †Antigracilinae constitutes the earliest record of Histeridae from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation (125 Myr), backdating the minimum age of the family by 25 Myr from the earliest Cenomanian (~99 Myr) to the Barremian of the Cretaceous Period. Our molecular phylogeny supports Histeridae to be divided into seven different clades, with currently recognised subfamilies Abraeinae (sensu lato), Saprininae, Chlamydopsinae, and Histerinae (sensu lato) recovered as monophyletic, while Dendrophilinae, Onthophilinae, and Tribalinae are polyphyletic taxa. The Burmese amber species †Pantostictus burmanicus Poinar & Brown is placed as a sister group to the tribe Plegaderini (Abraeinae) and was assigned as a new tribe Pantostictini trib. n.. Both molecular and combined phylogenies recovered the subfamilies Trypanaeinae and Trypeticinae deeply within the subfamily Abraeinae (sensu lato), and they are downgraded into Trypanaeini stat. n. and Trypeticini stat. n.

Discovery of the Genus Anapleus Horn, 1873 from Cretaceous Kachin Amber (Coleoptera: Histeridae)

“…However, later phylogenetic work combining morphological characters of larvae and adults and 18S rDNA sequence data suggested that, instead, histerid beetles with ovate body form might be basal, as represented by the genera Anapleus , Onthophilus Leach, 1817, or Dendrophilus Leach, 1817 [ 4 ]. This hypothesis is so far consistent with a series of newly reported fossils [ 7 , 8 , 10 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. The new finding of the first extinct record of the genus Anapleus in Cretaceous amber is also consistent with this idea, although the discovery of additional fossils and more thorough phylogenetic analyses combining extant and fossil forms will doubtlessly continue to shed further light on early histerid evolution.…”

Saprininae: Phylogeny, biogeography and a new classification of the subfamily (Coleoptera: Histeridae)

“…Their origins are estimated to have occurred during the Campanian and Maastrichtian ages (83.6–72.1 and 72.1–66 Ma, respectively; Walker & Geissman, 2022), which has seen most of the cladogenesis of the subfamily. If we contrast these dates with the ones inferred in Zhou et al (2020) we can state that according to their analyses, Saprininae likely originated in the Lower Cretaceous during the Aptian age about 120 Ma, while the first split and diversification occurred earlier than our results suggested, during the Albian age about 103 Ma. Zhou et al (2020), however, used only four Saprininae taxa in their analyses, namely Euspilotus ( Hesperosaprinus ) scissus ( Euspilotini ), Saprinus ( S .)…”

New Onthophiline Fossil Species (Coleoptera: Histeridae: Onthophilinae) from Mid-Cretaceous Burmese Amber

“…So, it appears that onthophiline-type histerids diversified early in the family's evolution and have experienced considerable extinction to have lost such a place of prominence. The significance of this observation depends to a degree on the assumption that these genera, and Onthophilinae in general, represent a clade, which remains questionable (Caterino 2021; Kovarik and Caterino 2016; Zhou et al 2020). Each of the new fossils we describe here offers a few tantalizingly new details on the morphology of these taxa as well, pointing to improving prospects for resolving the phylogenetic relationships among these and extant histerid lineages.…”