Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 106, Issue 17, Pages 7083-7088Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0810618106
Keywords
coevolution; Coleoptera; Curculionoidea; herbivory; phylogeny
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life program
- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas [5766]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The extraordinary diversity of herbivorous beetles is usually attributed to coevolution with angiosperms. However, the degree and nature of contemporaneity in beetle and angiosperm diversification remain unclear. Here we present a large-scale molecular phylogeny for weevils (herbivorous beetles in the superfamily Curculionoidea), one of the most diverse lineages of insects, based on approximate to 8 kilobases of DNA sequence data from a worldwide sample including all families and subfamilies. Estimated divergence times derived from the combined molecular and fossil data indicate diversification into most families occurred on gymnosperms in the Jurassic, beginning approximate to 166 Ma. Subsequent colonization of early crown-group angiosperms occurred during the Early Cretaceous, but this alone evidently did not lead to an immediate and major diversification event in weevils. Comparative trends in weevil diversification and angiosperm dominance reveal that massive diversification began in the mid-Cretaceous (ca. 112.0 to 93.5 Ma), when angiosperms first rose to widespread floristic dominance. These and other evidence suggest a deep and complex history of coevolution between weevils and angiosperms, including codiversification, resource tracking, and sequential evolution.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available