The Taxonomic Revolution of New World dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae)

Abstract

After almost two decades of stagnation, the taxonomy of the New World Scarabaeinae dung beetles has since 1988 been going through a period of great effervescence. In the last 35 years, 81 complete revisions and 69 supplements have been produced by 86 authors based in 15 countries, addressing the taxonomic status of 950 species. This is what we christen as the Taxonomic Revolution of New World dung beetles. We review the history and products of this revolution, explore its causes and its apparent exceptionalism among most other New World Coleoptera groups, and point to the many great challenges that still face the scarabaeine taxonomists. An aspect of interest to ecologists is the coevolution of the Taxonomic Revolution with what we call the Ecological Revolution of dung beetles, i.e., the similar expansion in ecological studies about these organisms. We argue that it has been the continuous feedback between these two simultaneous processes that has enabled each of them to exist and flourish: without the Ecological Revolution, the Taxonomic Revolution could not have existed, and vice-versa. Ecologists and taxonomists are partners in the scientific enterprise, symbionts one may say.

Adaptive shifts in Phanaeini dung beetles of the Mexican plateau cenocron in the Mexican transition zone

“…We used the most complete dated phylogeny at the species level available for the tribe (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020), which is a maximum clade credibility chronogram derived from the best BEAST analysis based on two uncorrelated lognormal relaxed clocks and a Yule tree model. From this phylogeny, we selected clade IV, which corresponds to the Phanaeini excluding Gromphas Brullé, often referred to as the subtribe Phanaeina (Cupello et al, 2023). We excluded from the analysis two species: Coprophanaeus machadoi (Pereira & d'Andretta) and Megatharsis buckleyi Waterhouse.…”

“…The former was initially considered a synonym of C. saphirinus (Sturm), leading to the merging of their records as a single species in the GBIF backbone. It is important to note that Coprophanaeus machadoi was revalidated by Cupello et al (2023); however, the GBIF dataset has not been updated to reflect this nomenclatural change, resulting in the continued merging of their records and it is not possible nor advisable to separate the records by location alone. On the other hand, M. buckleyi has no georeferenced records in GBIF.…”

“…This tribe has served as a classic example to illustrate the dispersal and diversification of the cenocrons of Neotropical origin (Halffter & Morrone, 2017). The tribe Phanaeini is endemic to the Americas (Edmonds, 1994) and has at least 216 species classified in 11 genera (Cupello et al, 2023). Recognised as one of the best studied groups of scarab beetles (Cupello et al, 2023;Gillett & Toussaint, 2020), the tribe Phanaeini stands out as one of the few scarab tribes in which phylogenetic relationships have been explored multiple times (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020;Maldaner et al, 2020;Philips et al, 2004;Price, 2007Price, , 2009.…”

“…The tribe Phanaeini is endemic to the Americas (Edmonds, 1994) and has at least 216 species classified in 11 genera (Cupello et al, 2023). Recognised as one of the best studied groups of scarab beetles (Cupello et al, 2023;Gillett & Toussaint, 2020), the tribe Phanaeini stands out as one of the few scarab tribes in which phylogenetic relationships have been explored multiple times (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020;Maldaner et al, 2020;Philips et al, 2004;Price, 2007Price, , 2009. The most complete phylogeny available to date (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020) includes 74 species and incorporates macroevolutionary and biogeographical analyses.…”

“…The most complete phylogeny available to date (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020) includes 74 species and incorporates macroevolutionary and biogeographical analyses. Although several taxonomical changes have led to an unexpected increase in the number of species in recent years (Cupello et al, 2023;Lizardo et al, 2022;; Moctezuma phylogeny remains a valuable resource that allows to apply phylogenetic comparative methods to test evolutionary hypotheses. As a part of the Mexican Plateau cenocron, phanaeines might have dispersed early in the Oligocene-Miocene (Gillett & Toussaint, 2020;Price, 2009), then the genus Phanaeus Macleay dispersed and diversified, where most of its species are found (Lizardo et al, 2022).…”