A note on Pallopteridae Phylogenetics
Hello!
I just wanted to upload some of this work that I did in my Phylogenetics class with Dr. Corrie Moreau during my last semester at Cornell, since I figure it would be interesting to the small number of people who actually know this family exists! In it, I used the existing COI data on NCBI to create phylogenies of the Pallopteridae and related families, along with an ordination of the different species based on wing pattern characteristics. Quite honestly, some of this report is a bit messy and hard to follow, but I'm not publishing it or anything so it should still be good enough. In addition, all phylogenetic results should be taken with a large heaping of salt given that only a single mitochondrial gene of 600 base pairs was used, which is not a very trustworthy data set for a phylogeny of multi-family scope.
Here's the presentation version; since it was made for me to verbally present with, there's not a ton of info on the slides.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gloY7IbCmb-X0yvezM0nigZFiD_6HgR9/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112758502983798783595&rtpof=true&sd=true
Here's the written report version, where I go into much more depth into my methods and research of the Pallopteridae, along with more info in terms of my conclusions.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1otVcyF4dwfoLpwJsT5vD8YlK4CeK5y60/view?usp=sharing
The main points are:
Pallopteridae should be restricted to Palloptera, Toxonevra, and Temnosira, excluding Eurygnathomyia and Maorina [corroborates Ho-Yeon Han, Papp]
Eurygnathomyia and Maorina represent separate family lineages (especially the latter, as Maorina was never recovered as sister to Pallopteridae sensu stricto)
The current concepts of Palloptera, Toxonevra, and Temnosira are likely paraphyletic in themselves [Corroborates Ho-Yeon]
The Nearctic Toxonevra do not seem to be the same genus as the Palearctic Toxonevra
There is a lot to be done in this family!!! The last paper on the group in the Nearctic is nearly 100 years old... and my work is very incomplete in terms of species coverage, so there's certainly more to be learned with more collection, better sampling, and more intensive sequencing techniques.
Tagging people who might be interested:
@ophrys @matthewvosper @sbushes @chrisangell @naturalistus @szucsich @treegrow @phycus @steve_kerr @dipterajere @zdanko @edanko
-Spencer
