Molecular phylogeny and zoogeography of net-winged beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae)

Mgr. Michal MÁŠEK

Doctoral thesis

Phylogeny and dispersal history of the family Lycidae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea)

Abstract:

The ultimate goal of systematic biology is to recover a robust species-level phylogeny. Such goal remains elusive for species-rich clades due to the chaotic traditional morphology-based taxonomy, the limited capacity of laboratories and the absence of material suitable for DNA isolation. Nevertheless, the recent progress in molecular phylogenetics opens a possibility to study the evolution of some clades with more resolution and better sampling. Here, the net-winged beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae) are used as a model group for such study and I focus primarily on the origins of principal lineages, their species richness and dispersal history. The aim of this paper is to analyze the phylogeny of net-winged beetles and discuss some relationships not yet indicated by the previous studies. Further, I focus on the distribution of main net-winged beetle clades identified by the molecular phylogeny and I try to define the areas with high phylogenetic and alpha-taxonomic diversity. Here, I use the largest up-to-date phylogeny of net-winged beetles to define robustly supported clades corresponding to the formally named tribes and analyze their areas of origin and evaluate the effectiveness of various barriers limiting their dispersal. Many internal relationships among Lycidae lineages remain ambiguous and similarly the species level classification has not been rigorously studied and mostly depends on historical uninformative descriptions. Therefore, I use tribes defined robustly by molecular phylogeny and morphology as natural entities and delimit species only on the basis of the phylogenetic tree.

Abstract:

The ultimate goal of systematic biology is to recover a robust species-level phylogeny. Such goal remains elusive for species-rich clades due to the chaotic traditional morphology-based taxonomy, the limited capacity of laboratories and the absence of material suitable for DNA isolation. Nevertheless, the recent progress in molecular phylogenetics opens a possibility to study the evolution of some clades with more resolution and better sampling. Here, the net-winged beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae) are used as a model group for such study and I focus primarily on the origins of principal lineages, their species richness and dispersal history. The aim of this paper is to analyze the phylogeny of net-winged beetles and discuss some relationships not yet indicated by the previous studies. Further, I focus on the distribution of main net-winged beetle clades identified by the molecular phylogeny and I try to define the areas with high phylogenetic and alpha-taxonomic diversity. Here, I use the largest up-to-date phylogeny of net-winged beetles to define robustly supported clades corresponding to the formally named tribes and analyze their areas of origin and evaluate the effectiveness of various barriers limiting their dispersal. Many internal relationships among Lycidae lineages remain ambiguous and similarly the species level classification has not been rigorously studied and mostly depends on historical uninformative descriptions. Therefore, I use tribes defined robustly by molecular phylogeny and morphology as natural entities and delimit species only on the basis of the phylogenetic tree.

Keywords

Coleoptera, Lycidae, phylogeny, zoogeography, rRNA, mtDNA, taxonomy

Language used: Czech

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 28. 2. 2017

Thesis defence

PALACKÝ UNIVERSITY OLOMOUC

Faculty of Science

Doctoral programme / field:
Biology / Zoology