Congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies of the rove beetle subfamily Staphylininae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae)

Chen-Yang Cai,Alfred F. Newton,Margaret K. Thayer,Zi-Wei Yin,Yu-Lingzi Zhou,Yong-Li Wang,Lü Liang

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-51408-1

Abstract

Staphylininae is the third largest subfamily of the enormous family Staphylinidae. Monophyly of Staphylininae and its sister relationship to the subfamily Paederinae have been broadly accepted according to both conventional morphology- and molecular-based phylogenies until the last three years. Recent molecular phylogenies rejected monophyly of Staphylininae and regarded Paederinae as a clade within it. This paper re-evaluates the recent molecular work, aiming to clarify the relationship between Staphylininae and Paederinae and resolve intertribal relationships within Staphylininae. Based on a new six-gene data set (5707 bp) for 92 taxa including Oxyporinae (outgroup), representatives of Paederinae, and members of all extant tribes of Staphylininae from published DNA data in GenBank, we generated a well-resolved phylogeny of Staphylininae with all deep nodes (intertribal relationships) strongly supported, and reassert the hypothesis that Staphylininae is monophyletic and indeed the sister group to Paederinae using both Bayesian and maximum likelihood inference. Additionally, our study is a case-study to show that both outgroup selection and completeness of nucleotide data can influence the outcome of a molecular phylogeny. With an increasing number of staphylinid fossils being discovered, the robust phylogeny of Staphylininae inferred by our research will provide a good framework for understanding the early evolution of this group.

Highlights

With 7972 described species grouped in 350 genera, Staphylininae Latreille, 1802 are the third most speciose rove beetle subfamily, after Aleocharinae Fleming, 1821 and Pselaphinae Latreille, 18021
Recent molecular phylogenies of Staphylininae based on six genes strongly (Bayesian inference) to moderately rejected both monophyly of Staphylininae, because of a sister group relationship between Platyprosopini (Staphylininae) and Paederinae, and the basal-most position of the ‘Xantholinine-lineage’ of Staphylininae, that study was principally focused on the tribe Staphylinini[14]
In order to evaluate the congruence between the molecular and morphology-based phylogenies, we re-analyzed the morphology-based data set from Solodovnikov & Newton[7] and the integrated data set from Kypke et al.[11] using both maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference methods

Summary

Introduction

With 7972 described species grouped in 350 genera, Staphylininae Latreille, 1802 are the third most speciose rove beetle subfamily, after Aleocharinae Fleming, 1821 and Pselaphinae Latreille, 18021. Recent molecular phylogenies of Staphylininae based on six genes strongly (Bayesian inference) to moderately (maximum likelihood) rejected both monophyly of Staphylininae, because of a sister group relationship between Platyprosopini (Staphylininae) and Paederinae, and the basal-most position of the ‘Xantholinine-lineage’ of Staphylininae, that study was principally focused on the tribe Staphylinini[14]. Brunke et al.[14] provided a more comprehensive molecular phylogeny of Staphylininae based on six genes, which were partially derived from the data first published by Chatzimanolis et al.[12] Their results rejected the monophyly of Staphylininae and recovered Diochini as sister to other staphylinine tribes and the subfamily Paederinae. In order to evaluate the congruence between the molecular and morphology-based phylogenies, we re-analyzed the morphology-based (both adult and larval characters) data set from Solodovnikov & Newton[7] and the integrated data set from Kypke et al.[11] using both maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference methods

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion