Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden; Departamento de Biología, Universidad de Sucre, Sucre, Colombia.
Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2021 Sep;162:107198. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107198. Epub 2021 May 12.
Understanding how and why some groups have become more species-rich than others, and how past biogeography may have shaped their current distribution, are questions that evolutionary biologists have long attempted to answer. We investigated diversification patterns and historical biogeography of a hyperdiverse lineage of Lepidoptera, the geometrid moths, by studying its most species-rich tribe Boarmiini, which comprises ca. 200 genera and ca. known 3000 species. We inferred the evolutionary relationships of Boarmiini based on a dataset of 346 taxa, with up to eight genetic markers under a maximum likelihood approach. The monophyly of Boarmiini is strongly supported. However, the phylogenetic position of many taxa does not agree with current taxonomy, although the monophyly of most major genera within the tribe is supported after minor adjustments. Three genera are synonymized, one new combination is proposed, and four species are placed in incertae sedis within Boarmiini. Our results support the idea of a rapid initial diversification of Boarmiini, which also implies that no major taxonomic subdivisions of the group can currently be proposed. A time-calibrated tree and biogeographical analyses suggest that boarmiines appeared in Laurasia ca. 52 Mya, followed by dispersal events throughout the Australasian, African and Neotropical regions. Most of the transcontinental dispersal events occurred in the Eocene, a period of intense geological activity and rapid climate change. Diversification analyses showed a relatively constant diversification rate for all Boarmiini, except in one clade containing the species-rich genus Cleora. The present work represents a substantial contribution towards understanding the evolutionary origin of Boarmiini moths. Our results, inevitably biased by taxon sampling, highlight the difficulties with working on species-rich groups that have not received much attention outside of Europe. Specifically, poor knowledge of the natural history of geometrids (particularly in tropical clades) limits our ability to identify key innovations underlying the diversification of boarmiines.
了解为什么某些群体比其他群体拥有更多的物种，以及过去的生物地理学如何影响它们当前的分布，是进化生物学家长期以来试图回答的问题。我们通过研究其最丰富的部落 Boarmiini，调查了鳞翅目（蛾类）的一个高度多样化的谱系的多样化模式和历史生物地理学，Boarmiini 包含约 200 属和约 3000 种已知物种。我们基于包含多达 8 个遗传标记的 346 个分类群数据集，采用最大似然法推断了 Boarmiini 的进化关系。Boarmiini 的单系性得到了强有力的支持。然而，许多类群的系统发育位置与当前的分类学不一致，尽管在对该部落中的大多数主要属进行了细微调整后，它们的单系性得到了支持。三个属被合并，一个新的组合被提出，四个种被归入 Boarmiini 中的不确定位置。我们的结果支持 Boarmiini 快速初始多样化的观点，这也意味着目前不能提出该组的主要分类细分。时间校准的树和生物地理学分析表明，Boarmiini 出现在劳亚古陆约 5200 万年前，随后在澳大利亚、非洲和新热带地区发生了分散事件。大多数跨大陆的扩散事件发生在始新世，这是一个地质活动和快速气候变化剧烈的时期。多样化分析表明，除了包含物种丰富的 Cleora 属的一个分支外，所有 Boarmiini 的多样化速度都相对稳定。本研究对理解 Boarmiini 蛾类的进化起源做出了重要贡献。我们的结果不可避免地受到分类群采样的影响，突出了处理尚未在欧洲以外得到太多关注的物种丰富群体的困难。具体来说，对几何形态的自然历史（特别是在热带类群中）了解甚少，限制了我们识别支撑 Boarmiini 多样化的关键创新的能力。
