Phylogeny and historical biogeography of Gondwanan moss-bugs (Insecta: Hemiptera: Coleorrhyncha: Peloridiidae) |
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Authors: | Zhen Ye Jakob Damgaard Daniel Burckhardt George Gibbs Juanjuan Yuan Huanhuan Yang Wenjun Bu |
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Institution: | 1. Institute of Entomology, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, 94 Weijin Road, Tianjin, 300071 China;2. Natural History Museum of Denmark, Zoological Museum, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark;3. School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand |
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Abstract: | The moss bugs of the Peloridiidae, a small group of cryptic and mostly flightless insects, is the only living family in Coleorrhyncha (Insecta: Hemiptera). Today 37 species in 17 genera are known from eastern Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Patagonia, and the peloridiids are thereby a group with a classical southern Gondwanan distribution. To explicitly test whether the present-day distribution of the Peloridiidae actually results from the sequential breakup of southern Gondwana, we provide the first total-evidence phylogenetic study based on morphological and molecular characters sampled from about 75% of recognized species representing 13 genera. The results largely confirm the established morphological phylogenetic context except that South American Peloridium hammoniorum constitutes the sister group to the remaining peloridiids. A timescale analysis indicates that the Peloridiidae began to diversify in the land mass that is today's Patagonia in the late Jurassic (153 Ma, 95% highest posterior density: 78–231 Ma), and that splitting into the three extant well-supported biogeographical clades (i.e. Australia, Patagonia and New Zealand/New Caledonia) is consistent with the sequential breakup of southern Gondwana in the late Cretaceous, indicating that the current transoceanic disjunct distributions of the Peloridiidae are best explained by a Gondwanan vicariance hypothesis. |
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