Abstract
The relationships among and within the families that comprise the orthopteran superfamily Stenopelmatoidea (suborder Ensifera) remain poorly understood. We developed a phylogenetic hypothesis based on Bayesian analysis of two nuclear ribosomal and one mitochondrial gene for 118 individuals (84 de novo and 34 from GenBank). These included Gryllacrididae from North, Central, and South America, South Africa and Madagascar, Australia and Papua New Guinea; Stenopelmatidae from North and Central America and South Africa; Anostostomatidae from North and Central America, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa; members of the Australian endemic Cooloola (three species); and a representative of Lezina from the Middle East. We also included representatives of all other major ensiferan families: Prophalangopsidae, Rhaphidophoridae, Schizodactylidae, Tettigoniidae, Gryllidae, Gryllotalpidae and Myrmecophilidae and representatives of the suborder Caelifera as outgroups. Bayesian analyses of concatenated sequence data supported a clade of Stenopelmatoidea inclusive of all analyzed members of Gryllacrididae, Stenopelmatidae, Anostostomatidae, Lezina and Cooloola. We found Gryllacrididae worldwide to be monophyletic, while we did not recover a monophyletic Stenopelmatidae nor Anostostomatidae. Australian Cooloola clustered in a clade composed of Australian, New Zealand, and some (but not all) North American Anostostomatidae. Lezina was included in a clade of New World Anostostomatidae. Finally, we compiled and compared karyotypes and sound production characteristics for each supported group. Chromosome number, centromere position, drumming, and stridulation differed among some groups, but also show variation within groups. This preliminary trait information may contribute toward future studies of trait evolution. Despite greater taxon sampling within Stenopelmatoidea than previous efforts, some relationships among the families examined continue to remain elusive.
Highlights
In the last 20 years, there have been more than 25 papers addressing the higher classification of the Orthoptera
The superfamily Stenopelmatoidea [=Gryllacridoidea] includes the families Anostostomatidae, Cooloolidae, Gryllacrididae, and Stenopelmatidae based on Orthoptera Species File (OSF) (Cigliano et al, 2017), yet these families have not always been supported as a monophyletic group on the basis of morphological phylogenetic hypotheses (Ander, 1939; Desutter-Grandcolas, 2003; Gwynne, 1995)
We gathered sequence data for 84 individuals. These were combined with 34 GenBank sequences for a total dataset consisting of 118 individuals in Gryllacrididae, Anostostomatidae, Stenopelmatidae, Cooloola, Lezina, Prophalangopsidae, Tettigoniidae, Rhaphidophoridae, Schizodactylidae, Gryllidae, Gryllotalpidae, and the suborder Caelifera (Table 1)
Summary
In the last 20 years, there have been more than 25 papers addressing the higher classification (family level and above) of the Orthoptera. More recently in an analysis of four nuclear gene regions across many Orthoptera, a Stenopelmatoidea clade was recovered including representatives of Anostostomatidae, Cooloola Rentz, Stenopelmatidae and Gryllacrididae, with low bootstrap support (Song et al, 2015). None of these previous studies examined very many species within the Stenopelmatoidea that are broadly representative of the extant ranges of these families; the integrity within families across their global distributions has yet to be examined, as acknowledged by Song et al (2015). One conclusion from all these studies seems widely acknowledged: that the katydid allies, including the Stenopelmatoidea, remain one of the most intractable problems in ensiferan higher taxonomy (Desutter-Grandcolas, 2003; Jost & Shaw, 2006; Legendre et al, 2010)
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