The neotenic Platerodrilus net-winged beetles have strongly modified development where females do not pupate and retain larval morphology when sexually mature. As a result, dispersal propensity of females is extremely low and the lineage can be used for reconstruction of ancient dispersal and vicariance patterns and identification of centres of diversity. We identified three deep lineages in Platerodrilus occurring predominantly in (1) Borneo and the Philippines, (2) continental Asia, and (3) Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and Java. We document limited ranges of all species of Platerodrilus and complete species level turnover between the Sunda Islands and even between individual mountain regions in Sumatra. Few dispersal events were recovered among the major geographical regions despite long evolutionary history of occurrence; all of them were dated at the early phase of Platerodrilus diversification up to the end of Miocene and no exchange of island faunas was identified during the Pliocene and Pleistocene despite the frequently exposed Sunda Shelf as sea levels fluctuated with each glacial cycle. We observed high diversity in the regions with persisting humid tropical forests during cool periods. The origins of multiple species were inferred in Sumatra soon after the island emerged and the mountain range uplifted 15 million years ago with the speciation rate lower since then. We suppose that the extremely low dispersal propensity makes Platerodrilus a valuable indicator of uninterrupted persistence of rainforests over a long time span. Additionally, if the diversity of these neotenic lineages is to be protected, a high dense system of protected areas would be necessary.

Department of Zoology Faculty of Science Palacky University 17 listopadu 50 771 46 Olomouc Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Bocak L, Bocakova M, Hunt T, Vogler AP. Multiple ancient origins of neoteny in Lycidae (Coleoptera): consequences for ecology and macroevolution. Proc R Soc B. 2008;275: 2015–2023. 10.1098/rspb.2008.0476 PubMed DOI PMC

Masek M, Ivie MA, Palata V, Bocak L. Molecular phylogeny and classification of Lyropaeini (Coleoptera: Lycidae) with description of larvae and new species of Lyropaeus. Raffl Bull Zool. 2014;62: 136–145.

Masek M, Bocak L. The taxonomy and diversity of Platerodrilus (Coleoptera: Lycidae) inferred from molecular data and morphology of adults and larvae. ZooKeys 2014;426: 29–63. 10.3897/zookeys.426.7398 PubMed DOI PMC

Mjöberg E. The mystery of the so called "Trilobite" or "Perty's larvae" definitely solved. Psyche. 1925;32: 119–154, pl. 3–4.

Wong ATC. A new species of neotenous beetle, Duliticola hoiseni (Insecta: Coleoptera: Cantharoidea: Lycidae) from Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Raffl Bull Zool. 1996;44: 173–187.

Gould SJ. Ontogeny and phylogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1977.

Levkanicova Z, Bocak L. Identification of net-winged beetle larvae (Coleoptera: Lycidae) using three mtDNA fragments: a comparison of their utility. Syst Ent. 2009;34: 210–221.

Myers N, Mittermeier RA, Mittermeier C, da Fonseca GAB, Kent J. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature. 2000;403: 853–858. PubMed

Thompson J, Higgins D, Gibson T. CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignments through sequence weighting, position specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucl Ac Res. 1994;22: 4673–4680. PubMed PMC

Belshaw R, Katzourakis A. BlastAlign: a program that uses blast to align problematic nucleotide sequences. Bioinformatics. 2005;21: 122–123. PubMed

Edgar RC. MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput. Nucl Ac Res. 2004;32: 1792–1797. PubMed PMC

Stamatakis A, Ludwig T, Meier H. RAxML-III: a fast program for maximum likelihood-based inference of large phylogenetic trees. Bioinformatics. 2005;21: 456–463. PubMed

Posada D. JMODELTEST: phylogenetic model averaging. Mol Biol Evol. 2008;25: 1253–1256. 10.1093/molbev/msn083 PubMed DOI

Huelsenbeck JP, Ronquist F. MRBAYES: Bayesian inference of phylogenetic trees. Bioinformatics 2001;17: 754–755. 10.1093/bioinformatics/17.8.754 PubMed DOI

Rambaut A, Suchard MA, Xie D, Drummond AJ. Tracer version 1.6. 2014. Available: http://beast.bio.ed.ac.uk/Tracer.

Yu Y, Harris AJ, He XJ. RASP (Reconstruct Ancestral State in Phylogenies) 2.1b. 2012. Available: http://mnh.scu.edu.cn/soft/blog/RASP. PubMed

Sanderson MJ. Estimation absolute rates of molecular evolution and divergence times: a penalized likelihood approach. Mol Biol Evol. 2002;19: 101–109. PubMed

Revell LJ. Phytools: An R package for phylogenetic comparative biology (and other things). Meth Ecol Evol. 2012;3: 217–223.

Drummond AJ, Rambaut A. BEAST: Bayesian evolutionary analysis by sampling trees. BMC Evol Biol. 2007;7: 214 PubMed PMC

Hall R. Cenozoic geological and plate tectonic evolution of SE Asia and the SW Pacific: computer-based reconstructions, model and animations. J Asian Earth Sci. 2002;20: 353–431.

Kazantsev SV. New taxa of Platerodrilini. Russ Ent J. 2009;18: 55–62.

Sklenarova K, Chesters D, Bocak L. Phylogeography of Poorly Dispersing Net-Winged Beetles: A Role of Drifting India in the Origin of Afrotropical and Oriental Fauna. PLoS One. 2013;8(6): e67957 10.1371/journal.pone.0067957 PubMed DOI PMC

Malohlava V, Bocak L. Evidence of extreme habitat stability in a Southeast Asian biodiversity hotspot based on the evolutionary analysis of neotenic net-winged beetles. Mol Ecol. 2010;19: 4800–4811. 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04850.x PubMed DOI

Zachos J, Pagani M, Sloan L, Thomas E, Billups K. Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science. 2001;292: 686–693. PubMed

Voris HK. Maps of Pleistocene sea levels in south-east Asia: shorelines, river systems and time duration. J Biogeogr. 2000;27: 1153–1167.

Bocak L, Bocakova M. Phylogeny and classification of the family Lycidae (Insecta: Coleoptera). Ann Zool. 2008;58: 695–720.

Dwyer GS, Chandler MA. Mid-Pliocene sea level and continental ice volume based on coupled benthic Mg/Ca palaeotemperatures and oxygen isotopes. Phil Trans R Soc A. 2009;367: 157–168. 10.1098/rsta.2008.0222 PubMed DOI

Hanebuth T, Stattegger K, Grootes PM. Rapid flooding of the Sunda Shelf: a Late glacial sea-level record. Science. 2000;288: 1033e1035 PubMed

Woodruff DS. Biogeography and conservation in Southeast Asia: how 2.7 million years of repeated environmental fluctuations affect today's patterns and the future of the remaining refugial-phase biodiversity. Biodiv Cons. 2010;19: 919–941.

Ray N, Adams JM. A GIS-based vegetation map of the World at the last Glacial Maximum (25,000–15,000 BP). Intern Arch. 2001;11: 1–44.

Gathorne-Hardy FJ, Syaukani, Davies RG, Eggleton F, Jones DT. Quaternary rainforest refugia in south-east Asia: using termites (Isoptera) as indicators. Biol J Linn Soc. 2002;75: 453–466.

Analysis of the Holarctic Dictyoptera aurora Complex (Coleoptera, Lycidae) Reveals Hidden Diversity and Geographic Structure in Müllerian Mimicry Ring

Conspicuousness, phylogenetic structure, and origins of Müllerian mimicry in 4000 lycid beetles from all zoogeographic regions

Biodiversity Inventory and Distribution of Metriorrhynchina Net-Winged Beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae), with the Identification of Generic Ranges

The Malacca Strait separates distinct faunas of poorly-flying Cautires net-winged beetles

Genome sequences identify three families of Coleoptera as morphologically derived click beetles (Elateridae)

Molecular Phylogeny, Diversity and Zoogeography of Net-Winged Beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae)

Phylogeny and evolution of Müllerian mimicry in aposematic Dilophotes: evidence for advergence and size-constraints in evolution of mimetic sexual dimorphism

Slowly dispersing neotenic beetles can speciate on a penny coin and generate space-limited diversity in the tropical mountains

The discovery of Iberobaeniidae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea): a new family of beetles from Spain, with immatures detected by environmental DNA sequencing