Opening Pandora's box: molecular phylogeny of the stink bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) reveals great incongruences in the current classification

Pentatomidae is one of the largest families within the Heteroptera and contains many species of economic importance, either by being plant pests or by their usefulness as biological control agents. The family is subdivided into as many as ten subfamilies; however, the monophyly of this taxon and phylogenetic relationships within the family have remained unstudied. In this paper, molecular data from mitochondrial [COI (564 bp), 16S RNA (592 bp)] and nuclear genes [28S RNA (646 bp), 18S RNA (1759 bp)] concatenated into a single matrix of 3589 bp, with a sampling of 160 taxa, were used to test the monophyly of the family and relationships based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) analyses. Both approaches yielded very similar topologies. The most striking result recovered in both analyses is the rejection of the monophyly of Pentatomidae as currently recognized, since Cyrtocorinae do not show a sister relationship with the clade composed of (Serbana + Pentatomidae sensu stricto) in any of the analyses. We corroborate Serbaninae as the sister lineage to all remaining Pentatomidae sensu stricto, and not as a member of Phloeidae as previously hypothesized. The monophyly of Podopinae and Pentatominae, and some of their respective tribes, is rejected. We discuss the current classification of this family and highlight the necessity of a reinterpretation based on the results herein obtained pointing out some of their morphological features. Additionally, cyrtocorids are defined as an independent lineage and upgraded to Cyrtocoridae stat. rev.

Automated summary

This study used molecular data to analyze the phylogeny of the Pentatomidae family within Heteroptera. The results suggest the monophyly of Pentatomidae is in question and some subfamilies and tribes within the family need to be reevaluated. Cyrtocorinae was found not to be a sister group to (Serbana + Pentatomidae sensu stricto) in both analyses.