Phylogeny and historical biogeography of leafhopper subfamily Evacanthinae (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) based on morphological and molecular data

Yang Wang,Yalin Zhang,Christopher H Dietrich

doi:10.1038/srep45387

Abstract

Phylogenetic relationships among major lineages of the Evacanthinae, a highly diverse leafhopper subfamily distributed worldwide, were explored by analysing a dataset of 100 discrete morphological characters and DNA sequence data from five gene regions. Sixty-seven taxa representing all evacanthine tribes and all regional faunas, and fourteen putative outgroup taxa were included. Maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analyses yielded similar tree topologies that were well resolved with strong support for the monophyly of Evacanthinae and its four previously included tribes, but indicated that Draconirvana Dietrich, was incorrectly placed to tribe and that Sophonia Walker, Evacanthus Le Peletier & Serville, Bundera Distant, Paraonukia Ishihara and Onukia Matsumura are not monophyletic. Divergence time analysis suggests that the deepest divergences coincided with breakup of Gondwana but that more recent divergences occurred largely within a single biogeographic realm during the Paleogene, with a few long-distance dispersal events. Biogeographical analyses suggest that Evacanthinae originated in Neotropical region. A new tribe, Pentoffiini trib.n., is established to include Pentoffia Kramer and Evanirvana Hill, the genus Draconirvana Dietrich, placement n. is transferred to Evacanthini from Nirvanini, a key to tribes is also given and illustrations of representative genera are provided.

Highlights

Leafhoppers (Cicadellidae), comprising more than 22,000 described species, are one of the largest insect families and inhabit most habitats that support vascular plants worldwide, from tropical rainforest to arctic tundra
(28S) D2 and D9-D10 were successfully amplified for all taxa, 73 for mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase I (COI), 67 for Histone H3 (H3) and 66 for Wingless (WG) were successfully amplified
A new pair of primers was designed to amplify H3 because of the low success rate of primers used in previous studies

Summary

Introduction

Leafhoppers (Cicadellidae), comprising more than 22,000 described species, are one of the largest insect families and inhabit most habitats that support vascular plants worldwide, from tropical rainforest to arctic tundra. One diverse leafhopper group that remains poorly studied is the subfamily Evacanthinae[9], which comprises 513 described species in 71 genera so far and is distributed worldwide[10], primarily inhabiting humid forest habitats. The classification of this group has been unstable over the past several decades with tribes presently included in Evacanthinae previously placed in the separate subfamilies Cicadellinae (tribe Evacanthini Metcalf) and Nirvaninae (tribes Nirvanini Baker and Balbillini Baker)[8] and united with unrelated groups (e.g., Occinirvanini Evans, presently included in Deltocephalinae). Species of the small tribe Balbillini are restricted to the Old World tropics[20]

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Results

Conclusion