A comprehensive molecular phylogeny of Geometridae (Lepidoptera) with a focus on enigmatic small subfamilies

Leidys Murillo-Ramos; Gunnar Brehm; Pasi Sihvonen; Axel Hausmann; Sille Holm; Hamid Reza Ghanavi; Erki Õunap; Andro Truuverk; Hermann Staude; Egbert Friedrich; Toomas Tammaru; Niklas Wahlberg

doi:10.7717/peerj.7386

A comprehensive molecular phylogeny of Geometridae (Lepidoptera) with a focus on enigmatic small subfamilies

PeerJ. 2019 Aug 27:7:e7386. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7386. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Leidys Murillo-Ramos^{1

2}, Gunnar Brehm³, Pasi Sihvonen⁴, Axel Hausmann⁵, Sille Holm⁶, Hamid Reza Ghanavi², Erki Õunap^{6

7}, Andro Truuverk⁸, Hermann Staude⁹, Egbert Friedrich¹⁰, Toomas Tammaru⁶, Niklas Wahlberg²

Affiliations

¹ Grupo Biología Evolutiva, Department of Biology, Universidad de Sucre, Sincelejo, Sucre, Colombia.
² Systematic Biology Group, Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
³ Institut für Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie, Phyletisches Museum, Jena, Germany.
⁴ Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁵ Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, München, Germany.
⁶ Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
⁷ Estonian University of Life Sciences, Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Tartu, Estonia.
⁸ Natural History Museum, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
⁹ LepsocAfrica, Magaliesburg, South Africa.
¹⁰ Berghoffsweg 5, Jena, Germany.

Abstract

Our study aims to investigate the relationships of the major lineages within the moth family Geometridae, with a focus on the poorly studied Oenochrominae-Desmobathrinae complex, and to translate some of the results into a coherent subfamilial and tribal level classification for the family. We analyzed a molecular dataset of 1,206 Geometroidea terminal taxa from all biogeographical regions comprising up to 11 molecular markers that includes one mitochondrial (COI) and 10 protein-coding nuclear gene regions (wingless, ArgK, MDH, RpS5, GAPDH, IDH, Ca-ATPase, Nex9, EF-1alpha, CAD). The molecular data set was analyzed using maximum likelihood as implemented in IQ-TREE and RAxML. We found high support for the subfamilies Larentiinae, Geometrinae and Ennominae in their traditional scopes. Sterrhinae becomes monophyletic only if Ergavia Walker, Ametris Hübner and Macrotes Westwood, which are currently placed in Oenochrominae, are formally transferred to Sterrhinae. Desmobathrinae and Oenochrominae are found to be polyphyletic. The concepts of Oenochrominae and Desmobathrinae required major revision and, after appropriate rearrangements, these groups also form monophyletic subfamily-level entities. Oenochrominae s.str. as originally conceived by Guenée is phylogenetically distant from Epidesmia and its close relatives. The latter is hereby described as the subfamily Epidesmiinae Murillo-Ramos, Sihvonen & Brehm, subfam. nov. Epidesmiinae are a lineage of "slender-bodied Oenochrominae" that include the genera Ecphyas Turner, Systatica Turner, Adeixis Warren, Dichromodes Guenée, Phrixocomes Turner, Abraxaphantes Warren, Epidesmia Duncan & Westwood and Phrataria Walker. Archiearinae are monophyletic when Dirce and Acalyphes are formally transferred to Ennominae. We also found that many tribes were para- or polyphyletic and therefore propose tens of taxonomic changes at the tribe and subfamily levels. Archaeobalbini stat. rev. Viidalepp (Geometrinae) is raised from synonymy with Pseudoterpnini Warren to tribal rank. Chlorodontoperini Murillo-Ramos, Sihvonen & Brehm, trib. nov. and Drepanogynini Murillo-Ramos, Sihvonen & Brehm, trib. nov. are described as new tribes in Geometrinae and Ennominae, respectively.

Keywords: Epidesmiinae; Loopers; Moths; New subfamily; Phylogeny; Taxonomy.

Grants and funding

Niklas Wahlberg received funding from the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 265511) and the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 2015-04441). Leidys Murillo-Ramos received funding from Colciencias, 756-2016 and Universidad de Sucre, Colombia. Hamid Reza Ghanavi was funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 642241 (BIG4). Sille Holm, Erki Õunap, Andro Truuverk and Toomas Tammaru were supported by institutional research funding IUT (IUT20-33) of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Gunnar Brehm received funding for fieldwork in Peru (DFG grant Br 2280/6-1) and for visits to the NHM (SYNTHESYS grant GB TAF1048 and 6817). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.