Pharaxonothinae

Tang, William, Xu, Guang, Marler, Thomas, Khuraijam, Jibankumar Singh, Singh, Rita, Lindström, Anders J., Radha, P., Rich, Stephen, Nguyen, Khang Sinh & Skelley, Paul, 2020, Beetles (Coleoptera) in cones of cycads (Cycadales) of the northern hemisphere: diversity and evolution, Insecta Mundi 2020 (781), pp. 1-19 : 5

Pharaxonothinae

The maximum likelihood tree for Pharaxonothinae associated with northern hemisphere cycads is shown in Figure 3 . This tree exhibits the same general clades produced in previous, smaller trees for Asian ( Xu et al. 2015; Skelley et al. 2017) and New World species ( Tang et al. 2018b), but with some differences in the branching of the clades relative to one another. Three genera, Ceratophila , Cycadophila , and Pharaxonotha , form the three main branches. The Asian genus, Cycadophila , is subdivided into subgenera Cycadophila Xu, Tang and Skelley and Strobilophila Skelley, Xu and Tang and subgenus Cycadophila is further subdivided into four species groups: lata, fupingensis, nigra, and papua (see Skelley et al. 2017). As in a previous DNA analysis of the New World forms ( Tang et al. 2018b) the genus Pharaxonotha can be divided into three groups: A) Early-diverging lineages from an older radiation that are distributed from Mexico to Colombia; B) A Caribbean radiation; C) A second, more recent, radiation from Mexico to Colombia and Bolivia. Bootstrap support for the position of some of these clades in the tree is weak and further analysis with a greater sampling of genes will help to improve their phylogenetic placement.

Figures

Figure 3. Phylogenetic tree for northern hemisphere Pharaxonothinae beetles associated with cycads based on maximum likelihood analysis of 16S rRNA mitochondrial gene sequences, scale bar indicates base pair substitution per nucleotides position, numbers on branches are bootstrap values.