@article {22093, title = {Phylogeny of the hawkmoth tribe Ambulycini (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae): mitogenomes from museum specimens resolve major relationships.}, journal = {Insect Systematics and Diversity}, volume = {3}, year = {2019}, month = {12/2019}, pages = {12, 1-8}, chapter = {12}, abstract = {

\"Ambulycini are a cosmopolitan tribe of the moth family Sphingidae, comprised of 10 genera, 3 of which are found in tropical Asia, 4 in the Neotropics, 1 in Africa, 1 in the Middle East, and 1 restricted to the islands of New Caledonia. Recent phylogenetic analyses of the tribe have yielded conflicting results, and some have suggested a close relationship of the monobasic New Caledonian genus Compsulyx Holloway, 1979 to the Neotropical ones, despite being found on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. Here, we investigate relationships within the tribe using full mitochondrial genomes, mainly derived from dry-pinned museum collections material. Mitogenomic data were obtained for 19 species representing nine of the 10 Ambulycini genera. Phylogenetic trees are in agreement with a tropical Asian origin for the tribe. Furthermore, results indicate that the Neotropical genus Adhemarius Oiticica Filho, 1939 is paraphyletic and support the notion that Orecta Rothschild \& Jordan 1903 and Trogolegnum Rothschild \& Jordan, 1903 may need to be synonymized. Finally, in our analysis the Neotropical genera do not collectively form a monophyletic group, due to a clade comprising the New Caledonian genus Compsulyx and the African genus Batocnema Rothschild \& Jordan, 1903 being placed as sister to the Neotropical genus Protambulyx Rothschild \& Jordan, 1903. This finding implies a complex biogeographic history and suggests the evolution of the tribe involved at least two long-distance dispersal events.\"

}, keywords = {ADHEMARIUS, AMBULYCINI, BATOCNEMA, BAYESIAN INFERENCE, BIOGEOGRAPHY, COMPSULYX, MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD, MITOGENOME, NEXTGEN SEQUENCING, PHYLOGENOMICS, PHYLOGENY, PROTAMBULYX, SPHINGIDAE, TROGOLEGNUM}, doi = {10.1093/isd/ixz025}, author = {Timmermans, M.J.T.N. and Daghmoumi, S.M. and Glass, D. and Hamilton, C.A. and Kawahara, A.Y. and Kitching, I.J.} } @article {22026, title = {Phylogenomics resolves major relationships and reveals significant diversification rate shifts in the evolution of silk moths and relatives.}, journal = {BMC Evolutionary Biology}, volume = {19}, year = {2019}, month = {09/2019}, pages = {182 [1-13]}, chapter = {182}, abstract = {

\"Background: Silkmoths and their relatives constitute the ecologically and taxonomically diverse superfamily Bombycoidea, which includes some of the most charismatic species of Lepidoptera. Despite displaying spectacular forms and diverse ecological traits, relatively little attention has been given to understanding their evolution and drivers of their diversity. To begin to address this problem, we created a new Bombycoidea-specific Anchored Hybrid Enrichment (AHE) probe set and sampled up to 571 loci for 117 taxa across all major lineages of the Bombycoidea, with a newly developed DNA extraction protocol that allows Lepidoptera specimens to be readily sequenced from pinned natural history collections.
Results: The well-supported tree was overall consistent with prior morphological and molecular studies, although some taxa were misplaced. The bombycid Arotros Schaus was formally transferred to Apatelodidae. We identified important evolutionary patterns (e.g., morphology, biogeography, and differences in speciation and extinction), and our analysis of diversification rates highlights the stark increases that exist within the Sphingidae (hawkmoths) and Saturniidae (wild silkmoths).
Conclusions: Our study establishes a backbone for future evolutionary, comparative, and taxonomic studies of Bombycoidea. We postulate that the rate shifts identified are due to the well-documented bat-moth \“arms race\”. Our research highlights the flexibility of AHE to generate genomic data from a wide range of museum specimens, both age and preservation method, and will allow researchers to tap into the wealth of biological data residing in natural history collections around the globe.\"

}, keywords = {ANCHORED HYBRID ENRICHMENT, APATELODIDAE, AROTROS, BOMBYCIDAE, BOMBYCOIDEA, DNA, PHYLOGENOMICS, PHYLOGENY, TARGETED SEQUENCE CAPTURE}, doi = {10.1186/s12862-019-1505-1}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-019-1505-1}, author = {Hamilton, C.A. and St Laurent, R.A. and Dexter, K. and Kitching, I.J. and Breinholt, J.W. and Zwick, A. and Timmermans, M.J.T.N. and Barber, J.R. and Kawahara, A.Y.} } @article {22007, title = {Assessing specialized metabolite diversity in the cosmopolitan plant genus Euphorbia L.}, journal = {Frontiers in Plant science}, volume = {10}, year = {2019}, month = {07/2019}, pages = {846}, chapter = {846}, abstract = {

\"Coevolutionary theory suggests that an arms race between plants and herbivores yields increased plant specialized metabolite diversity and the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution predicts that coevolutionary interactions vary across geographic scales. Consequently, plant specialized metabolite diversity is expected to be highest in coevolutionary hotspots, geographic regions, which exhibit strong reciprocal selection on the interacting species. Despite being well-established theoretical frameworks, technical limitations have precluded rigorous hypothesis testing. Here we aim at understanding how geographic separation over evolutionary time may have impacted chemical differentiation in the cosmopolitan plant genus Euphorbia. We use a combination of state-of-the-art computational mass spectral metabolomics tools together with cell-based high-throughput immunomodulatory testing. Our results show significant differences in specialized metabolite diversity across geographically separated phylogenetic clades. Chemical structural diversity of the highly toxic Euphorbia diterpenoids is significantly reduced in species native to the Americas, compared to Afro-Eurasia. The localization of these compounds to young stems and roots suggest a possible ecological relevance in herbivory defense. This is further supported by reduced immunomodulatory activity in the American subclade as well as herbivore distribution patterns. We conclude that computational mass spectrometric metabolomics coupled with relevant ecological data provide a strong tool for exploring plant specialized metabolite diversity in a chemo-evolutionary framework.\"

}, keywords = {BIOGEOGRAPHY, COEVOLUTION, COMPUTATIONAL METABOLOMICS, EUPHORBIA, EUPHORBIACEAE, FOODPLANT CHEMISTRY, FOODPLANT EVOLUTION, FOODPLANT SPECIFICITY, HYLES, IMMUNOMODULATORY TESTING, PHYLOGENY, SPHINGIDAE}, doi = {10.3389/fpls.2019.00846}, url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00846/full}, author = {Ernst, M. and Nothias, L.-F. and van der Hooft, J.J.J. and Silva, R.R. and Saslis-Lagoudakis, C.H. and Grace, O.M. and Martinez-Swatson, K. and Hassemer, G. and Funez, L.A. and Simonsen, H.T. and Medema, M.H. and Staerk, D. and Nilsson, N. and Lovato, P. and Dorrestein,P.C. and R{\o}nsted, N.} } @article {21983, title = {How has the environment shaped geographical patterns of insect body sizes? A test of hypotheses using sphingid moths}, journal = {Journal of Biogeography}, volume = {46}, year = {2019}, month = {07/2019}, pages = {1687-1698}, chapter = {1687}, abstract = {

\"Aim: We mapped the geographical pattern of body sizes in sphingid moths and investigated latitudinal clines. We tested hypotheses concerning their possible environmental control, that is, effects of temperature (negative: temperature size rule or Bergmann\&$\#$39;s rule; positive: converse Bergmann rule), food availability, robustness to starvation during extreme weather and seasonality.
Location: Old World and Australia/Pacific region.
Methods: Body size data of 950 sphingid species were compiled and related to their distribution maps. Focusing on body length, we mapped the median and maximum size of all species occurring in 100 km grid cells. In a comparative approach, we tested the predictions from explanatory hypotheses by correlating species\&$\#$39; size to the average environmental conditions encountered throughout their range, under univariate and multivariate models. We accounted for phylogeny by stepwise inclusion of phylogenetically informed taxonomic classifications into hierarchical random-intercept mixed models.
Results: Median body sizes showed a distinctive geographical pattern, with large species in the Middle East and the Asian tropics, and smaller species in temperate regions and the Afrotropics. Absolute latitude explained very little body size variation, but there was a latitudinal cline of maximum size. Species\&$\#$39; median size was correlated with net primary productivity, supporting the food availability hypothesis, whereas support for other hypotheses was weak. Environmental correlations contributed much less (i.e. \<10\%) to explaining overall size variation than phylogeny (inclusion of which led to models explaining \>70\% of variability).
Main conclusion: The intuitive impression of larger species in the tropics is shaped by larger size maxima. Median body sizes are only very weakly related to latitude. Most of the geographical variation in body size in sphingid moths is explained by their phylogenetic past. NPP and forest cover correlate positively with the body size, which supports the idea that food availability allowed the evolution of larger sizes.\"

}, keywords = {BERGMANN{\textquoteright}S RULE, BODY SIZE, ECTOTHERMS, MODELS, PHYLOGENY, SPHINGIDAE}, doi = {10.1111/jbi.13583}, url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13583}, author = {Beerli, N. and B{\"a}rtschi, F. and Ballesteros-Mejia, L. and Kitching, I.J. and Beck, J.} } @article {21885, title = {Phylogenetic relationships among Bombycidae s.l. (Lepidoptera) based on analyses of complete mitochondrial genomes}, journal = {Systematic Entomology}, volume = {44}, year = {2019}, month = {07/2019}, pages = {490-498}, chapter = {490}, abstract = {

\"The family Bombycidae (sensu Minet, 1994) is a diverse group of species belonging to the superfamily Bombycoidea. It is an economically important group of moth species, containing well-known silk-producing insects, as well as many pests of agriculture and forestry. The morphology-based hypothesis of Minet (1994) on the composition of Bombycidae is in conflict with subsequent phylogenetic hypotheses for the superfamily based on nuclear genes. In this paper, the complete mitochondrial genomes of nine species of Bombycidae are presented for the first time. Based on these genomes, four dataset partitions and three gblocks parameter settings, phylogenetic relationships among Bombycidae were reconstructed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods. Bombycidae was confirmed as a polyphyletic group, with the traditional subfamilies Prismostictinae and Oberthueriinae forming a single well-supported clade that is distant to Bombycinae. The phylogenetic relationships within Bombycoidea were supported as ((((Bombycinae, Sphingidae), Saturniidae), (Prismostictinae, Oberthueriinae)), Eupterotidae).\"

}, keywords = {ANDRACA, BAYESIAN INFERENCE, BOMBYCIDAE, BOMBYX, COMPARMUSTILIA, DNA, ENDROMIDAE, ERNOLATIA, GANISA, MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD, MITOGENOME, MUSTILIA, MUSTILIZANS, OCINARA, PHYLOGENY, PRISMOSTICTA, PRISMOSTICTOIDES}, doi = {10.1111/syen.12337}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12337}, author = {Wang, X. and Chen, Z.-M. and Gu, X.-S. and Wang, M. and Huang, G.-H. and Zwick, A.} }