Perizomini (Lepidoptera: Geometridae: Larentiinae) are polyphyletic

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-516
Author(s):  
Erki Õunap ◽  
Toomas Tammaru ◽  
Andro Truuverk

Recent advances in molecular systematics have led to an emerging understanding of the phylogenetic history of the family Geometridae. These studies have basically confirmed the traditional subdivision of the subfamily Larentiinae into tribes but unsolved problems remain. Here we test the monophyly of the tribe Perizomini, and evaluate the division of this tribe into genera using Bayesian and maximum likelihood analyses of one mitochondrial and eight nuclear gene fragments. We show that the Eurasian members of Perizoma Hübner, 1825, Mesotype Hübner, 1825 and Gagitodes Warren, 1893 together form a monophyetic tribe Perizomini. However, Martania Mironov, 2000 is not closely related to these genera, but is considered to belong to Melanthiini according to the results of the phylogenetic analyses. Morphological evidence supporting this rearrangement is discussed. The Nearctic Larentia basaliata Walker, 1862 was shown to belong in the genus Martania as M. basaliata (Walker, 1862) comb. nov. and being specifically distinct from the morphologically similar Palaearctic M. taeniata. Three other studied ‘Perizoma’ species from the New World were similarly placed far from Perizomini in the phylogenetic tree, and were not related to each other. We conclude that both the tribe Perizomini and the genus Perizoma are polyphyletic which indicates that the group needs a global revision. It remains an open question whether Perizomini have a worldwide distribution as previously assumed, or is this tribe confined to the Palaearctic region.

Author(s):  
Vadim Markovich Rozin

This article offers a nontraditional approach towards studying the poetics of literary work, which considers personality of the reader and analysis of the reality that he reconstructs and experiences. The empirical material is comprised on the authorial analysis of the poetics of Meir Shalev's novel “Fontanelle”. This literary work features the four major themes: love of the protagonist Michael, creation of the new world from its inception, the characteristic of life values of a person, and discussion of the peculiarities of reality that Meir Shalev builds as an artist. In the first theme, the author reveals several images of love, reflecting on the mystical love of the protagonist for the young woman Ana, love in the family and marriage, love for children. At the same time, the author discusses not only the way that Meir Shalev understands and describes love in “Fontanelle”, but also talks about the own interpretation of love. In the plotline of the second theme, the author also distinguishes two lines: the story the protagonist’s grandfather Apupa, who carries his beloved Amuma on his shoulders across the country, seeking a place where they could create a home and family; and the story of gradual development of a small settlement into a city, created by Apupa and Amuma on the mountain, and several Jewish families at the lower valley. Discussing in the third topic the anchors of human life, the author emphasizes such values as effort, love, family and family line, creativity, indicating that Michael is not alone, he is loved, he gets involved in family history, as well as the history of Israel and Jewish culture, drawing strength in the heroes of this story. The last part of the article gives characteristic to the reality of “Fontanelle” and explains why the author liked it.


Zootaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4254 (5) ◽  
pp. 537 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHIA-HSUAN WEI ◽  
SHEN-HORN YEN

The Epicopeiidae is a small geometroid family distributed in the East Palaearctic and Oriental regions. It exhibits high morphological diversity in body size and wing shape, while their wing patterns involve in various complex mimicry rings. In the present study, we attempted to describe a new genus, and a new species from Vietnam, with comments on two assumed congeneric novel species from China and India. To address its phylogenetic affinity, we reconstructed the phylogeny of the family by using sequence data of COI, EF-1α, and 28S gene regions obtained from seven genera of Epicopeiidae with Pseudobiston pinratanai as the outgroup. We also compared the morphology of the new taxon to other epicopeiid genera to affirm its taxonomic status. The results suggest that the undescribed taxon deserve a new genus, namely Mimaporia gen. n. The species from Vietnam, Mimaporia hmong sp. n., is described as new to science. Under different tree building strategies, the new genus is the sister group of either Chatamla Moore, 1881 or Parabraxas Leech, 1897. The morphological evidence, which was not included in phylogenetic analyses, however, suggests its potential affinity with Burmeia Minet, 2003. This study also provides the first, although preliminary, molecular phylogeny of the family on which the revised systematics and interpretation of character evolution can be based. 


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keerthic Aswin ◽  
Srinivasan Ramachandran ◽  
Vivek T Natarajan

AbstractEvolutionary history of coronaviruses holds the key to understand mutational behavior and prepare for possible future outbreaks. By performing comparative genome analysis of nidovirales that contain the family of coronaviruses, we traced the origin of proofreading, surprisingly to the eukaryotic antiviral component ZNFX1. This common recent ancestor contributes two zinc finger (ZnF) motifs that are unique to viral exonuclease, segregating them from DNA proof-readers. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that following acquisition, genomes of coronaviruses retained and further fine-tuned proofreading exonuclease, whereas related families harbor substitution of key residues in ZnF1 motif concomitant to a reduction in their genome sizes. Structural modelling followed by simulation suggests the role of ZnF in RNA binding. Key ZnF residues strongly coevolve with replicase, and the helicase involved in duplex RNA unwinding. Hence, fidelity of replication in coronaviruses is a result of convergent evolution, that enables maintenance of genome stability akin to cellular proofreading systems.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald M. Clouse ◽  
Gonzalo Giribet

Opiliones (harvestmen) in the suborder Cyphophthalmi are not known to disperse across oceans and each family in the suborder is restricted to a clear biogeographic region. While undertaking a revisionary study of the South-east Asian family Stylocellidae, two collections of stylocellids from New Guinea were noted. This was a surprising find, since the island appears never to have had a land connection with Eurasia, where the rest of the family members are found. Here, 21 New Guinean specimens collected from the westernmost end of the island (Manokwari Province, Indonesia) are described and their relationships to other cyphophthalmids are analysed using molecular sequence data. The specimens represent three species, Stylocellus lydekkeri, sp. nov., S. novaguinea, sp. nov. and undescribed females of a probable third species, which are described and illustrated using scanning electron microscope and stereomicroscope photographs. Stylocellus novaguinea, sp. nov. is described from a single male and it was collected with a juvenile and the three females of the apparent third species. Molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that the new species are indeed in the family Stylocellidae and they therefore reached western New Guinea by dispersing through Lydekker’s line – the easternmost limit of poor dispersers from Eurasia. The New Guinean species may indicate at least two episodes of oceanic dispersal by Cyphophthalmi, a phenomenon here described for the first time. Alternatively, the presence in New Guinea of poor dispersers from Eurasia may suggest novel hypotheses about the history of the island.


2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vest Pedersen

AbstractThe phylogenetics of 40 taxa of European bumblebees were analysed based on PCR amplified and direct sequenced DNA from one region of the mitochondrial gene Cytochrome Oxidase I (1046 bp) and for 26 taxa from two regions in the nuclear gene Elongation Factor 1α (1056 bp). The sequences were aligned to the corresponding sequences in the honey bee. Phylogenetic analyses based on parsimony, as well as maximum likelihood, indicate that the bumblebees can be separated into several well-supported clades. Most of the terminal clades correspond very well with the clades known from former phylogenetic analyses based on morphology and recognized as the subgenera: Mendacibombus, Confusibombus, Psithyrus, Thoracobombus, Megabombus, Rhodobombus, Kallobombus, Alpinobombus, Subterraneobombus, Alpigenobombus, Pyrobombus, Bombus and Melanobombus. All the cuckoo bumblebees form a well-supported clade, the subgenus Psithyrus, within the true bumblebees. All the analyses place Kallobombus as the most basal taxon in contradiction to former analyses. The other deeper nodes of the phylogenetic trees, which are weakly supported, deviate significantly from former published trees - especially the trees based on mtCO-I. Presumably, the reasons are that multiple hits and the strong bias of the bases A and T blur the relationships in the deepest part of the trees. Analyses of the region in mtCO-I show a very strong A+T bias (A+T= 75%), which also indicate preferences in the use of codons with A or T in third positions. In closely related entities, there is only a weak transversion bias (A+T). In the studied regions in EF 1-α, no nucleotide bias is observed. The observed differences in bases between the investigated taxa are relatively small and the gene is too conserved to solve all the questions that the analyses of the deeper nodes using mtCO-I raise.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Barker ◽  
Zheng Li ◽  
Thomas I. Kidder ◽  
Chris R. Reardon ◽  
Zhao Lai ◽  
...  

AbstractPremise of the studyLike many other flowering plants, members of the Compositae (Asteraceae) have a polyploid ancestry. Previous analyses found evidence for an ancient duplication or possibly triplication in the early evolutionary history of the family. We sought to better place this paleopolyploidy in the phylogeny and assess its nature.MethodsWe sequenced new transcriptomes for Barnadesia, the lineage sister to all other Compositae, and four representatives of closely related families. Using a recently developed algorithm, MAPS, we analyzed nuclear gene family phylogenies for evidence of paleopolyploidy.Key resultsWe found that the previously recognized Compositae paleopolyploidy is also in the ancestry of the Calyceraceae. Our phylogenomic analyses uncovered evidence for a successive second round of genome duplication among all sampled Compositae except Barnadesia.ConclusionsOur analyses of new samples with new tools provide a revised view of paleopolyploidy in the Compositae. Together with results from a high density Lactuca linkage map, our results suggest that the Compositae and Calyceraceae have a common paleotetraploid ancestor and most Compositae are descendants of a paleohexaploid. Although paleohexaploids have been previously identified, this is the first example where the paleotetraploid and paleohexaploid lineages have survived over tens of millions of years. The complex polyploidy in the ancestry of the Compositae and Calyceraceae represents a unique opportunity to study the long-term evolutionary fates and consequences of different ploidal levels.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Foley ◽  
Tim Lueddecke ◽  
Dong-Qiang Chen ◽  
Henrik Krehenwinkel ◽  
Sven Kuenzel ◽  
...  

Mygalomorph spiders of the family Theraphosidae, known to the broader public as tarantulas, are among the most recognizable arachnids on earth due to their large size and widespread distribution. Their use of urticating setae is a notable adaptation that has evolved exclusively in certain New World theraphosids. Thus far, the evolutionary history of Theraphosidae remains poorly understood; theraphosid systematics still largely relies on morphological datasets, which suffer from high degrees of homoplasy, and traditional targeted sequencing of preselected genes failed to provide strong support for supra-generic clades (i.e. particularly those broader than subfamilies). In this study, we provide the first robust phylogenetic hypothesis of theraphosid evolution inferred from transcriptome data. A core ortholog approach was used to generate a phylogeny from 2460 orthologous genes across 25 theraphosid genera, representing all of the major theraphosid subfamilies, except Selenogyrinae. For the first time our phylogeny recovers a monophyletic group that comprises the vast majority of New World theraphosid subfamilies including Aviculariinae and Theraphosinae. Concurrently, we provide additional evidence for the integrity of questionable subfamilies, such as Poecilotheriinae and Psalmopoeinae, and support the non-monophyly of Ischnocolinae. The deeper relationships between almost all subfamilies are confidently inferred for the first time. We also used our phylogeny in tandem with published morphological data to perform ancestral state analyses on urticating setae. This revealed that the evolution of this important defensive trait might be explained by three equally parsimonious scenarios.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie F Salter ◽  
Peter A Hosner ◽  
Edward L Braun ◽  
Rebecca T Kimball ◽  
Robb T Brumfield ◽  
...  

As phylogenomics focuses on comprehensive taxon sampling at the species and population/subspecies levels, incorporating genomic data from historical specimens has become increasingly common. While historical samples can fill critical gaps in our understanding of the evolutionary history of diverse groups, they also introduce additional sources of phylogenomic uncertainty, making it difficult to discern novel evolutionary relationships from artifacts caused by sample quality issues. These problems highlight the need for improved strategies to disentangle artifactual patterns from true biological signal as historical specimens become more prevalent in phylogenomic datasets. Here, we tested the limits of historical specimen-driven phylogenomics to resolve subspecies-level relationships within a highly polytypic family, the New World quails (Odontophoridae), using thousands of ultraconserved elements (UCEs). We found that relationships at and above the species-level were well-resolved and highly supported across all analyses, with the exception of discordant relationships within the two most polytypic genera which included many historical specimens. We examined the causes of discordance and found that inferring phylogenies from subsets of taxa resolved the disagreements, suggesting that analyzing subclades can help remove artifactual causes of discordance in datasets that include historical samples. At the subspecies-level, we found well-resolved geographic structure within the two most polytypic genera, including the most polytypic species in this family, Northern Bobwhites (Colinus virginianus), demonstrating that variable sites within UCEs are capable of resolving phylogenetic structure below the species level. Our results highlight the importance of complete taxonomic sampling for resolving relationships among polytypic species, often through the inclusion of historical specimens, and we propose an integrative strategy for understanding and addressing the uncertainty that historical samples sometimes introduce to phylogenetic analyses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E Ditter ◽  
Luis M Mejía-Ortíz ◽  
Heather D Bracken-Grissom

Abstract Barbouriidae Christoffersen, 1987 is a family comprised of 4 genera and 11 species of enigmatic shrimps restricted to anchialine or marine caves whose evolutionary history and relationships remain elusive. We investigated the evolutionary relationships among members of Barbouriidae with the inclusion of four genera and nine species, and newly collected material from Belize, the Bahamas, and the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. Phylogenetic analyses based on seven mitochondrial and nuclear gene regions and genetic distances calculated using partial 16S gene regions have identified a need to revisit the relationships and classification within Barbouriidae. More specifically, we find evidence to suggest Janicea Manning & Hart, 1984 as a junior synonym of Parhippolyte Borradaile, 1900, B. yanezi Mejía, Zarza & López, 2008 as a synonym of Barbouria cubensis (von Martens, 1872), and define two new subfamilies, Calliasmatinae Holthuis, 1973 and Barbouriinae Christoffersen, 1987. Included is a dichotomous key for the species of Barbouriidae that summarizes previous literature and includes new morphological characters. Our findings shed light on existing inaccuracies and gaps in molecular data from barbouriids. We also provide further clarity into evolutionary relationships among genera of Barbouriidae and their allies, suggesting phylogeographic divisions within the family. Our findings suggest an early Atlantic-Pacific divide among genera originating from a shallow-water reef ancestor.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Valerio Bernasconi ◽  
Marc Pollet ◽  
Paul Irvine Ward

With ~7000 species in ~220 genera, the Dolichopodidae is one of the most speciose families of Diptera. Though the family as such is well defined, knowledge on the internal phylogenetic relationships is generally poor and although authors of successive monographs and catalogues indifferently listed most genera in specific subfamilies, their decisions were rarely based on sound phylogenetic analyses and never on molecular data. In a first attempt to unravel the phylogeny of Dolichopodidae, a combined COI + 12S rDNA dataset (1199 characters) of 119 samples of 101 European species was used in Bayesian (BAY), neighbour joining (NJ) and weighted/unweighted maximum parsimony analyses (MP). At the subfamily level, our study supports the monophyly of Dolichopodinae, Sympycninae, and Hydrophorinae (including Machaerium Haliday, 1832). Ten (Campsicnemus Haliday, 1851, Chrysotus Meigen, 1824, Dolichopus Latreille, 1796, Gymnopternus Loew, 1857, Medetera Fischer von Waldheim, 1819, Poecilobothrus Mik, 1878, Rhaphium Meigen, 1803, Teuchophorus Loew, 1857, Sciapus Zeller, 1842, Syntormon Loew, 1857) of the 14 multispecies genera formed monophyletic assemblages in all analyses and relationships among Argyra Macquart, 1834 species were supported in most analyses. At the subgeneric level, seven of the nine stable species-groups in Dolichopus as established during previous research were supported in most analyses. The validity of the recent transfer of Hercostomus chrysozygos Wiedemann, 1817 to Poecilobothrus was clearly supported in all analyses. Within Argyra and Rhaphium, interspecific relationships reflected previously used subgeneric classifications (Lasiargyra Mik, 1878, Leucostola Loew, 1857 and Argyra s.s. in Argyra; Porphyrops Meigen, 1824, Rhaphium s.s. and Xiphandrium Loew, 1857 in Rhaphium). Further, subclades within Medetera corresponded to species-groups defined by other authors featuring a different morphology and ecology. Anepsiomyia flaviventris (Meigen, 1824) most probably does not belong to Sympycninae but its current position within Peloropeodinae could not be confirmed.


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