Phylogeny of the South American Baetidae (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) based on morphological and molecular characters

NIETO, CAROLINA & MONAGHAN, MICHAEL.

Alemania

Congreso; XVI International Symposium on Plecoptera & XII International conference on Ephemeroptera; 2008

The family Baetidae presents a cosmopolitan distribution with almost 100 genera distributed across the planet except New Zealand and Antarctica. South America has around the 25% of the known genera of Baetidae and this family is the second richest (after Leptophlebiidae) of Ephemeroptera in this area. We constructed a molecular matrix including three mitochondrial (rrnL, cob, cox1) and two nuclear (18S, h3) genes. We also included 125 morphological characters taken from both nymphal (104) and imaginal (21) states. We included all the South America (26) genera and at least two species per genera. To test the monophyly of the family in South America we included genera from North and Central America, Madagascar and Africa. We analyzed the molecular and morphology matrices separately using the traditional alignment (ClustalW) and parsimony analysis (TNT). Jackknifing and Bremer Support were used to calculate the group support. Preliminary analyses suggest South American Baetidae comprise several distinct clades including a single monophyletic group of at least 10 multispecific genera. In South America at least one third of the Baetidae species are described only from adults. The molecular data could be used to associate nymphs and adults in a number of species under study.