Research Article |
|
Corresponding author: Vinicius S. Ferreira ( vinicius.ferreira@senckenberg.de ) Corresponding author: Robin Kundrata ( robin.kundrata@upol.cz ) Academic editor: Sergio Pérez
© 2025 Felipe Francisco Barbosa, André Silva Roza, José Ricardo M. Mermudes, Michael F. Geiser, Jiri Hodecek, Lara-Sophie Dey, Michael A. Ivie, Viridiana Vega-Badillo, Vinicius S. Ferreira, Robin Kundrata.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
|
Abstract
Phengodidae, or railroad-worm beetles, are bioluminescent soft-bodied beetles with flight capable adult males and highly paedomorphic larviform females. They are well accepted as part of the “lampyroid” clade within Elateroidea, and their suprageneric relationships have been recently studied using a phylogenomic approach. However, the placement of taxa currently classified in the subfamily Penicillophorinae remained untested. Penicillophorinae form an assemblage of morphologically modified, rarely collected Neotropical genera that are unique among Phengodidae. They are particularly characterized by their moniliform, serrate or uniramose antennae, in contrast to the typically bipectinate antennae present in all other members of the family. To investigate the phylogenetic position of Penicillophorinae, we implemented a low-coverage whole genome sequencing approach to produce genomic data for Acladocera and Walterius, two out of five genera classified in this subfamily. The resulting phylogenomic analyses confirmed the monophyly of Phengodidae; however, Penicillophorinae were not found as a monophyletic group. Our results recovered the topology: Cydistinae + (Phengodinae + (Acladocera + (Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae including Walterius))). Therefore, we suggest that the antennal double rami were lost at least twice among Phengodidae: once in the newly circumscribed Mastinocerinae (with Walterius), and once in Acladocera, which we tentatively keep in Penicillophorinae. Further, we discuss the morphological modifications of other genera currently classified in Penicillophorinae. Future phylogenomic research should focus on clarifying the boundaries and composition of phengodid subfamilies, particularly by including additional genera from Penicillophorinae and Mastinocerinae.
Acladocera, bioluminescence, neoteny, paedomorphosis, soft-bodied beetle, Walterius
Phengodidae are a small soft-bodied elateroid family, currently containing approximately 300 species in 45 genera (
The phylogeny of Phengodidae has received increased attention in the last decade, with three research papers (
More recently, molecular-based phylogenies have made important additions to the family systematics and classification. These include the recognition of the Asian Cydistinae as phengodids (
The Penicillophorinae are a group of morphologically modified genera that are unique among Phengodidae. Currently composed of five genera and seven species (
Morphology of genera traditionally placed in Penicillophorinae. A–D Right protarsus: A Penicillophorus sp., B Acladocera sp., C Adendrocera carmelita
Previous morphological phylogenetic assessments of Phengodidae considered Penicillophorinae to be outside the family, forming a clade with Telegeusidae (currently in Elateroidea: Omethidae) (
Our taxon sampling included a total of 13 terminals, of which five (including Acladocera Wittmer, 1981 and Walterius Zaragoza-Caballero, 2008) were newly sequenced. For full information on the analyzed dataset, see Table
The two Penicillophorinae samples were initially identified by their collectors as Acladocera sp. (SDEIC003) (by JH), and as Walterius sp. Zaragoza-Caballero, 2008 (SDEIC035) (by MFG). Their identifications were later corroborated by ASR and MFG based on current literature on Phengodidae (
Our final datasets (50-NT, 70-NT, 50-AA, and 70-AA, see results section) consisted of 13 samples. Ingroup consisted of 10 taxa representing all five currently recognized subfamilies of Phengodidae: Cydistinae (Microcydistus minor (Bolívar and Pieltain, 1913)); Phengodinae (Zarhipis integripennis (LeConte, 1874)); Penicillophorinae (Acladocera sp. and Walterius sp.); Cenophenginae (Cenophengus debilis LeConte, 1881); and Mastinocerinae (Brasilocerus oberthuri (Pic, 1955), Cephalophrixothrix sp., Distremocephalus opaculus (Horn, 1895), Oxymastinocerus peruanus (Wittmer, 1956), and Phrixothrix hirtus E. Olivier, 1909). We adopted the Phengodidae classification proposed by
Genomic extractions followed
Quality control, normalization, library preparation, and sequencing of samples were done by Novogene Genomics (Munich, Germany). A DNA library of 350 bp insert size was constructed for the sample and sequenced in a NovaSeq X Plus Series with a pair-end 150 bp sequencing strategy. About 10Gb reads were obtained from each sample.
Sequence reads were initially processed using the CAPTUS pipeline (
After initial data quality control and genome assembly, our ortholog search was conducted using CAPTUS (
Since we did not implement an in vivo hybridization strategy for data acquisition (see the previous section), instead of using the “Bait-100-85_Elateridae.fasta” as our reference file for the ortholog search in CAPTUS, we used the original file “Elateridae_Submission.fasta” used for their probe design. Full details about the production of the “ElaterBaits” are available at
CAPTUS extract step was performed in our previously assembled genomes. We implemented the CAPTUS “Nuclear proteins” search strategy. This approach uses Scipio (
Phylogenetic relationship reconstruction and other tests were performed on four versions of our multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) composed of loci with ≥50% or ≥70% of taxa present (“completeness”). For determining the completeness of each dataset, we used Geneious 11.1.5. The multiple sequence alignments were concatenated using AMAS (
Phylogenetic analyses were performed in four datasets (Table
Statistical support for internal branches measured for each phylogenetic reconstruction based on nucleotide (NT) and amino acid (AA) datasets with 50% and 70% completeness. Support levels for maximum likelihood (ML) analyses refer to the Shimodaira–Hasegawa-like approximate likelihood ratio test (SH-aLRT; in %), the Bayesian-like transformation of aLRT (aBayes); and the “ultrafast” bootstrap (UFBoot, in %). Support levels for coalescent ASTRAL analysis refer to the local posterior probabilities (Local PP).
| Tree/Analysis | Supports | (Rhagophthalmidae + Phengodidae) | Phengodidae | (Phengodinae + (Acladocera + (Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae including Walterius))) | (Acladocera + (Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae including Walterius)) | (Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae including Walterius) | Mastinocerinae including Walterius | (Oxymastinocerus + Cephalophrixothrix) |
| 01-ML-50-AA | SH-aLRT / aBayes/ UFBoot | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 |
| 02-ML-70-AA | SH-aLRT / aBayes/ UFBoot | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 |
| 03-ML-50-NT | SH-aLRT / aBayes/ UFBoot | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 |
| 04-ML-70-NT | SH-aLRT / aBayes/ UFBoot | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 | 100/1/100 |
| 05-ASTRAL-50-AA | Local PP | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.7109 | 0.9996 | 0.8796 |
| 06-ASTRAL-70-AA | Local PP | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.6642 | 0.9997 | 0.9064 |
| 07-ASTRAL-50-NT | Local PP | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 08-ASTRAL-70-NT | Local PP | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The nodal support in ML analyses was measured through the following metrics: the “ultrafast” bootstrap (UFBoot;
Concordance factors are important tools in phylogenomics. These measures help to summarize information from different gene trees and sites that arise due to the boundary between reticulate and divergent evolution (
The concordance factors (gCF and sCF) are more properly defined as “descriptors of topological variation” and “estimates of biological parameters,” in which they can be used to measure the proportion of the dataset for which a given split/clade is considered true (see
To further investigate the statistical support of alternative hypotheses, in which the sampled Penicillophorinae genera Acladocera and Walterius clustered together, we applied the method of four-cluster quartet-likelihood mapping analysis (FcLM;
This analysis was designed to directly assess the phylogenetic signal of all tested datasets (nucleotides, amino acids, 50% and 70% completeness), which are supporting the putative non-monophyly of Acladocera and Walterius in the analyses. At the same time, we tested the current putative topology regarding the subfamilies Penicillophorinae, Cenophenginae, and Mastinocerinae (
After ortholog search with CAPTUS, our loci recovery levels ranged from 839 (Zarhipis integripennis) to 2239 (Lamprohiza splendidula) from each sample or archived data source (Table
Rhagophthalmidae were recovered as a sister-group of Phengodidae, and Phengodidae as a monophylum in all analyses, with maximum support. All analyses (Fig.
A Phylogenomic hypothesis for Phengodidae. All topologies rendered the same topology with the analyses performed at the nucleotide level 50-NT (50% completeness matrix) and 70-NT (70% completeness matrix) and amino acid level 50-AA (50% completeness matrix) and 70-AA (70% completeness matrix). All branches are supported with maximum support levels for the Shimodaira–Hasegawa-like approximate likelihood ratio test (SH-aLRT), the Bayesian-like transformation of aLRT (aBayes), and the “ultrafast” bootstrap (UFBoot). B four-cluster likelihood mapping (FcLM) test of alternative phylogenetic hypotheses showing the placement of Acladocera and Walterius in relationship to other Phengodidae groups.
After the most comprehensive phylogenomic hypothesis for Phengodidae by
Our analyses recovered Acladocera as a sister-group of Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae, and Walterius nested inside Mastinocerinae. These results are corroborated by morphology. Acladocera has two gular sutures (Fig.
The placement of the remaining Penicillophorinae (i.e. Adendrocera Wittmer, 1976, Penicillophorus Paulus, 1975, and Tarsakanthos Zaragoza-Caballero, 2008), although not investigated in our study, can be hypothesized based on their morphology. Adendrocera and Penicillophorus are more similar to Walterius than to Acladocera, based on a number of characters like the presence of a single gular suture, ventral tarsal combs on the first pro- and mesotarsomere, although of variable length in relation to the tarsomere (Figs
Acladocera, in turn, has the most aberrant morphology when compared with other genera currently placed in the Penicillophorinae. The only similarity with Adendrocera and Penicillophorus is in the antennae. Otherwise, Acladocera has two gular sutures (Fig.
The antennae of Phengodidae are typically bipectinate or biflabellate, i.e. with most antennomeres having a pair of short or long rami. Such antennae occur in all phengodid subfamilies but Penicillophorinae, and were also present on the only fossil phengodid recently described from the Cretaceous Burmese amber (
As we failed to sequence Penicillophorus in our study, the subfamily status of Penicillophorinae remains dubious, and the only change we proposed in this study is the transfer of Walterius to Mastinocerinae. Future studies including more Penicillophorinae (especially the type genus, Penicillophorus) and a broader sampling of other subfamilies, in particular more Mastinocerinae genera, are necessary to understand and redefine the boundaries and composition of these subfamilies, and further elucidate the phylogenetic history of the family Phengodidae.
With a low-coverage whole genome sequencing approach, we successfully produced genomic data for two species of the highly morphologically modified genera traditionally placed in Penicillophorinae (Acladocera sp. and Walterius sp.) allowing us to test their phylogenetic placement within Phengodidae. Penicillophorinae were consistently recovered as a non-monophyletic group, rendering the following relationship: Cydistinae + (Phengodinae + (Acladocera + (Cenophenginae + Mastinocerinae including Walterius))). Although we did not have access to the DNA-grade material of the type genus of Penicillophorinae, we were able to test the placement of other superficially similar genera within the broader context of Phengodidae phylogenomics. These results suffer from the absence of the type genus of the Penicillophorinae, which is morphologically quite divergent from the two genera included here (Figs
Author contributions. Conceptualization: FFB, ASR, VSF, RK. Funding acquisition: ASR, JRMM, VSF. Data curation: ASR, VSF, LSD. Formal analysis: FFB, VSF. Investigation: FFB, ASR, JRMM, MFG, JH, LSD, MAI, VVB, VSF, RK. Methodology: FFB, LSD, VSF. Writing—original draft: FFB, ASR, VSF, RK. Writing—review & editing: FFB, ASR, JRMM, MFG, JH, LSD, MAI, VVB, VSF, RK. Project administration: FFB, ASR, VSF, RK. Validation: FFB, ASR, VSF, RK. Visualization: ASR, VSF.
Competing interests. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in relation to this work.
MFG would like to thank M. Frances Keller and David Wyatt for the opportunity to join their research trip to Belize, and the Belize Forest Department (Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Risk Management, Belmopan) for issuing permits. JH would like to thank Jiří Pirkl for his collaboration and assistance with the expedition in the Dominican Republic, Michel Sartori and Nadir Alvarez for their support, Gabriel de los Santos for his help in the Dominican Republic, and the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales for issuing the necessary collecting and export permits (VAPB-08862, VAPB-10887, VAPB-12695). ASR acknowledges the Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) for the personal funding (grant number 205.818/2022 and 205.819/2022) and for the photographic system acquired through grant (grant number 110.040/2014). JRMM was supported by a fellowship from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, grant numbers 312786/2022-0 and 444658/2024-6) and received grants from the FAPERJ (grant number SEI-260003/006248/2024). MAI records this as a contribution of the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station. VSF is grateful to the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) of Brazil for the novation process 202559/2015-7. We extend our sincere gratitude to the editor and three reviewers for their dedicated efforts and suggestions to improve our manuscript.
Table
Data type: .pdf
Explanation notes: Taxon sampling of terminals included in the present study, including taxon and GenBank accession codes, and information on recovered loci.
File S1
Data type: .zip
Explanation notes: Nucleotide and amino acid sequences, partition files, and phylogenetic trees.