Holarctic Lineages Cannot Inform Diversity and Evolution in the Neotropics – the barklice family Psocidae as a case study

Abstract

Abstract Despite tropical species comprising nearly 60% of Psocidae species, previous studies examining the Psocidae phylogeny have undersampled tropical diversity (<40% species in trees). Here we discuss the systematics of the Psocidae based on the most comprehensive species-level sampling of the Psocidae. We infer the phylogenetic position of 43 previously unsampled Neotropical species in the Psocidae phylogeny. We find that Neotropical psocids are generally not closely related to morphologically similar taxa in the Holarctic region. Consequently, the monophyletic status for the major groups within Psocidae (subfamilies and tribes) is recovered only when Holarctic groups are sampled (7–10 of 11 higher-level groups are monophyletic) but violated when Neotropical species are also sampled in the tree (1 of 11 higher-level groups are monophyletic). Our study pinpoints at the downfalls of simply extending taxonomic knowledge from lineages of a certain area (i.e. Holarctic) to inform diversity and evolution of lineages in other regions (i.e. Neotropics).