The age and phylogeny of wood boring weevils and the origin of subsociality

Larval helpers and age polyethism in ambrosia beetles

“…In conclusion, the high degree of sociality in ambrosia beetles seems to result from a combination of four major factors: (i) parental care as a preadaptation for the evolution of sociality in the ancestors of modern ambrosia beetles (38); (ii) very high relatedness within families due to haplodiploidy and inbreeding; (iii) a proliferating, monopolizable resource providing ample food for many individuals, which needs to be tended and protected; and (iv) high costs of dispersal (for another scolytine beetle see ref. 40) due to the difficulties of finding a suitable host tree, of nest foundation, and a successful start of fungiculture (11,16), which render predispersal cooperation particularly worthwhile.…”

“…In Xyleborini, ideal conditions for the evolution of both mutualism and altruism seem to prevail: (i) they are well preadapted to brood care because they originate from a beetle lineage (Scolytinae) with parental care (38); (ii) they breed in isolated galleries that are founded by one reproductive that dominates offspring production [i.e., the foundress (17)]; (iii) they are haplodiploid and mate predominantly among full siblings [e.g., inbreeding coefficients of approximately 0.9 in Xylosandrus germanus Reiter (8)], which increases relatedness within natal colonies; and (iv) they disperse solitarily after maturation to reproduce elsewhere. In addition, (v) colony members benefit greatly from cooperation due to their dependence on fungiculture; and (vi) the wood used as a resource for shelter and substratum for fungi is virtually nondepreciable, which renders resource competition negligible.…”

Molecular phylogeny of bark and ambrosia beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae) based on 18 molecular markers

“…Voucher specimens are deposited in the Coleoptera collection of the University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen, Norway. All weevils, Platypodinae and Scolytinae species used in this study were previously described in other phylogenetic studies [7,11,58].…”

“…Previous attempts on investigating phylogenetic relationships in beetles have demonstrated recurrent problems in resolving deeper relationships such as those between the four beetle suborders, but also much younger divergences [1][2][3][4]. One of the most problematic groups includes the weevils, where the majority of tribes and subfamilies remain unresolved despite considerable efforts in assembling molecular data [5][6][7][8]. Bark and ambrosia beetles in the subfamily Scolytinae represent a weevil lineage where much effort has been invested in developing molecular markers for phylogenetic analysis [9,10].…”

Genomics of the Dutch elm disease pathosystem: are we there yet?

“…To our knowledge, very limited genomic information on any of the aforementioned species has been published in peer reviewed journals. The National Center for Biological Information (NCBI) database contains only five gene sequences from S. scolytus, which were analyzed within the context of a phylogenetic study of wood boring weevils (Jordal et al 2011). The mitochondrial genome of S. laevis was also sequenced and annotated, again in the context of weevil phylogenetics (Haran et al 2013).…”