engleski

Larval morphology and the evolution of the Drusinae (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae)

The Drusinae are restricted to Eurasian mountain ranges from the Caucasus in the East to the Iberian Peninsula in the South-West. Three quarters are endemics limited to a single or very few mountain ranges, making the group an ideal model for studying evolutionary processes like speciation and diversification. The evolutionary interest in the Drusinae is demonstrated by a number of key papers and species grouping concepts. We present here the current results from an ongoing project on the larval taxonomy, ethology, phylogeography and molecular phylogenetics of the Drusinae. We explicitly test the validity of a recent hypothesis that larval feeding ecology best explains the relationships within Drusinae and the evolutionary history of the group based on an extended taxon sampling. We examine the phylogenetic relationships between species and genera within the caddisfly subfamily Drusinae (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae) based sequence data from mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Sequence data are analysed for over 30 species from five genera from the subfamily. We analyse individual and combined data sets using a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo and a Maximum Parsimony approach. Using Bayesian ancestral character state reconstructions we infer the evolution of feeding ecology and relevant larval morphological characters. Our analyses show that within the subfamily Drusinae three feeding types exist: shredders, carnivorous filtering collectors and epilithic grazers. The letter two are otherwise unusual in the Limnephilidae, and their evolution may have promoted the high degree of diversity in this species-rich group of mountain caddisflies.

feeding ecology; molecular phylogeny; insects

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