Extant thrips diverged in the early tertiary period

Abstract

Thysanoptera, commonly known as thrips, are diverse tiny insects whose earliest fossil record dates back to the Triassic period. Since there are few studies on the divergence time of taxa under Thysanoptera, this study used 13 mitochondrial coding protein genes to reconstruct the phylogenetic tree with divergence time of 26 species of this order and show a reliable phylogenetic relationship of thrips species. The time tree of this study shows that most extant thrips diverged in the early Tertiary period, while the fossil records also support that most extinct thrips appeared in this period. This study expands our understanding of the evolution of thrips and provides a feasible way of using multiple mitochondrial genes to establish robust phylogenetic relationships and explore divergence time between species.