Cerurinae

St Laurent, Ryan A., Goldstein, Paul Z., Miller, James S., Markee, Amanda, Staude, Hermann S., Kawahara, Akito Y., Miller, Scott E. & Robbins, Robert K., 2023, Phylogenetic systematics, diversification, and biogeography of Cerurinae (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae) and a description of a new genus, Insect Systematics and Diversity 7 (2), pp. 1-25 : 19

Composition of Cerurinae

The genera assigned to Cerurinae by previous authors, except Tecmessa and Corania (here a synonym of Tecmessa ) ( Schintlmeister 2008, Becker 2014, Schintlmeister and Witt 2015, Miller et al. 2018), are monophyletic under a variety of phylogenetic inference methods. To alleviate the polyphyly of Tecmessa (Heterocampinae) , we propose Americerura and transfer 17 species to it from Tecmessa . Based on our phylogenomic results, which included all genera of Cerurinae , the generic classification of this subfamily is likely to be stable.

At the notodontid subfamily level, the nearly comprehensive (lacking only Scranciinae and Dicranurinae s.s.) outgroup sampling showed that Cerurinae is monophyletic and not nested within Notodontinae . Its relationship with Dicranurinae is yet unresolved. In the ML analyses, Cerurinae shares a common ancestor with the Dicranurinae s.l. genera Shachia , Liparopsis , and Harpyia . The ASTRAL analysis ( Fig. S3 ) only weakly supports (ASV = 0.59) the sister relationship of Cerurinae with Shachia , and does not recover Liparopsis and Shachia as monophyletic, illustrating the instability of the (( Shachia , Liparopsis ), Cerurinae ) grouping recovered in ML analyses. While caterpillars of both Shachia and Liparopsis are similar to those of Cerurinae (e.g., by virtue of the presence of stemapods), they are physiologically distinct, feeding on Fagaceae and Juglandaceae rather than Salicaceae ( Schintlmeister 1989, 2008, 2020; Miller 1991; Funamoto and Sugiura 2017).

The composition of the Dicranurinae will ultimately depend on the placement of its type genus Dicranura in a more exhaustively sampled phylogenetic analysis of the family. This will require the reclassification and re-assignment of various ‘Dicranurinae’ to subfamilies better circumscribed by a combination of genomic and morphological data (St Laurent et al. unpubl. data). Pending additional sampling, it is conceivable that the concept of Cerurinae could eventually be broadened to include other taxa. Regardless, the monophyly of the genera here considered to compose Cerurinae is well-established on the basis of our analyses and corroborated morphologically; establishing higher taxa is outside the scope of the present work.

Figures

Fig. 3. Biogeographic reconstruction of Cerurinae in RevBayes using a constrained, time-stratified DEC model. Nodal symbols represent the highest posterior probabilities (PP) for ancestral ranges, the node symbol size reflecting the PP value given in the inset legend. State codes are as follows:A = Africa, R = Nearctic, N = Neotropical,W = West Palearctic, E = East Palearctic, I = Indomalaya, and U = Australasia; with combined states given as a combination of any two codes, which are further denoted on key nodes for clarity.