Four new species of Trigonopterus Fauvel from the island of New Britain (Coleoptera, Curculionidae)

The hyperdiverse genus Trigonopterus has its center of diversity in Melanesia, but only a single species is recorded from the Bismarck Archipelago to date. Here we describe four new species from the island of New Britain: T. chewbacca sp. n., T. obsidianus sp. n., T. puncticollis sp. n. and T. silaliensis sp. n. We provide cytochrome oxidase subunit I (cox1) sequences of the new species and a key to all five species known from the Bismarck Archipelago

Ultraconserved elements (UCEs) resolve the phylogeny of Australasian smurf-weevils.

Weevils (Curculionoidea) comprise one of the most diverse groups of organisms on earth. There is hardly a vascular plant or plant part without its own species of weevil feeding on it and weevil species diversity is greater than the number of fishes, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals combined. Here, we employ ultraconserved elements (UCEs) designed for beetles and a novel partitioning strategy of loci to help resolve phylogenetic relationships within the radiation of Australasian smurf-weevils (Eupholini). Despite being emblematic of the New Guinea fauna, no previous phylogenetic studies have been conducted on the Eupholini. In addition to a comprehensive collection of fresh specimens, we supplement our taxon sampling with museum specimens, and this study is the first target enrichment phylogenomic dataset incorporating beetle specimens from museum collections. We use both concatenated and species tree analyses to examine the relationships and taxonomy of this group. For species tree analyses we present a novel partitioning strategy to better model the molecular evolutionary process in UCEs. We found that the current taxonomy is problematic, largely grouping species on the basis of similar color patterns. Finally, our results show that most loci required multiple partitions for nucleotide rate substitution, suggesting that single partitions may not be the optimal partitioning strategy to accommodate rate heterogeneity for UCE loci

Linear regression of logit proportion of UCE loci captured verses specimen age.

<p>Number of UCE loci and specimen age for; <i>Xylocopa</i> (carpenter bees) from Blaimer et al. 2016, <i>Aphelocoma</i> (scrub-jays) from McCormack et al. 2016, Eupholini (smurf weevils) from this study. Specimen age is in years from when individual was first collected and preserved. Regressions show a decline in the number of UCE loci captured as specimen age increases, the rate of decline is similar between studies.</p

Phylogenetic tree results of the Eupholini weevils, branch colors correspond to species clades: LEFT: SVDQuartets species tree.

<p>Dashed lines denote nodes that differ between trees. Node values indicate bootstrap support values. RIGHT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees. Node values indicate support values of MrBayes posterior (minus burn-in) used as ASTRAL bootstrap replicates.</p

Linear regression of logit proportion of UCE loci captured verses specimen age.

<p>Number of UCE loci and specimen age for; <i>Xylocopa</i> (carpenter bees) from Blaimer et al. 2016, <i>Aphelocoma</i> (scrub-jays) from McCormack et al. 2016, Eupholini (smurf weevils) from this study. Specimen age is in years from when individual was first collected and preserved. Regressions show a decline in the number of UCE loci captured as specimen age increases, the rate of decline is similar between studies.</p

Shows approximate position of character sets used for each locus in PartitionFinder 2 for ASTRAL analyses, overlaid on the frequency of PIS in the final UCE data set.

<p>UCE Core refers to the section of the locus that corresponds to the length of UCE probe. Numbers 1–5 on left of UCE Core correspond to matching characters sets on the right, such that e.g. both sections 5 are the same character set. Character sets 1–5 correspond to one fifth of the length of the locus (left and right of UCE Core) minus the sites from the UCE Core.</p

ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees (i.e. using the 6 character in sets in Fig 2 to inform the partitioning strategy).

<p>Node values indicate support values of MrBayes posterior used as ASTRAL bootstrap replicates, branch colors correspond to species clades. Weevils from top clockwise: <i>Eupholus azureus</i> Macleay, <i>Eupholus schoenherrii schoenherrii</i> (Guérin-Méneville), <i>Celebia arrogans</i> (Boisduval), <i>Rhinoscapha sp</i>. “Large-brown Mt.Wilhelm 2700m”, <i>Gymnopholus (Symbiopholus) acarifer</i> Gressitt, <i>Gymnopholus regalis</i> Gressitt, <i>Eupholus cuvierii</i> (Guérin-Méneville), <i>Rhinoscapha tricolor</i> Faust, <i>Rhinoscapha doriae</i> Pascoe, <i>Gymnopholus nitidus</i> Gressitt & Sedlacek.</p

LEFT: ASTRAL species tree derived from multi-partitioned RAxML trees.

<p>Node values indicate bootstrap support values. RIGHT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees. Node values are derived from posterior distribution of MrBayes trees (minus burn-in) where each sample of the MCMC generation represents a bootstrap sample to ASTRAL.</p

Left: Boxplot of number of UCEs by preservation type.

<p>Average number of UCEs for modern ethanol preserved specimens was higher than for museum pinned specimens. Right: Plot of number of UCEs vs their date of collection. Plot shows general trend of fewer UCEs captured for the older the specimens, however the exact rate of decrease would require more specimens systematically sampled by precise preservation type.</p

Phylogenetic tree results of the Eupholini weevils, branch colors correspond to species clades: LEFT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from single-partitioned MrBayes analyses (each gene tree reconstructed using a single partition), of individual gene trees.

<p>RIGHT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees. Node values indicate support values of MrBayes posterior used as ASTRAL bootstrap replicates.</p