The phylogeny of true bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera), one of the most diverse insect groups in terms of morphology and ecology, has been the focus of attention for decades with respect to several deep nodes between the suborders of Hemiptera and the infraorders of Heteroptera. Here, we assembled a phylogenomic data set of 53 taxa and 3102 orthologous genes to investigate the phylogeny of Hemiptera-Heteroptera, and both concatenation and coalescent methods were used. A binode-control approach for data filtering was introduced to reduce the incongruence between different genes, which can improve the performance of phylogenetic reconstruction. Both hypotheses (Coleorrhyncha + Heteroptera) and (Coleorrhyncha + Auchenorrhyncha) received support from various analyses, in which the former is more consistent with the morphological evidence. Based on a divergence time estimation performed on genes with a strong phylogenetic signal, the origin of true bugs was dated to 290-268 Ma in the Permian, the time in Earth's history with the highest concentration of atmospheric oxygen. During this time interval, at least 1007 apomorphic amino acids were retained in the common ancestor of the extant true bugs. These molecular apomorphies are located in 553 orthologous genes, which suggests the common ancestor of the extant true bugs may have experienced large-scale evolution at the genome level.

True water bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Nepomorpha) are among the most common insects of freshwater ecosystems, comprising approximately 2300 extant species spread over five recognized superfamilies, including Corixoidea, Nepoidea, Ochteroidea, Notonectoidea and Naucoroidea. They exhibit striking morphological and behavioural adaptations to various freshwater environments, including oar‐like swimming legs, breathing siphons or plastron respiration. The phylogeny of Nepomorpha remains contentious, particularly for the early‐diverging lineage, which has hindered the understanding of the evolution of morphology and respiratory behaviour within the clade. In the present study, we assembled a large‐scale phylogenomic dataset, including 2018 single‐copy, protein‐coding gene sequences from 85 representative species of heteropterans (44 nepomorphans) to investigate the phylogeny of Nepomorpha and the corresponding implications for character evolution. Our inferences suggest that Corixoidea is the sister group of the remaining Nepomorpha, then Nepoidea and Ochteroidea; these clades successively branched in the Triassic, following the end‐Permian extinction event about 251 million years ago. The five superfamilies radiated in the Jurassic, when geological reconfigurations and drastic climate changes occurred. An ancestral state reconstruction demonstrated that the ancestral respiration type in true water bugs is likely a simple air‐bubble type, which was widely utilized in true water bugs. Subsequently, different clades have evolved variously specialized adaptations to improve its efficiency. We propose that the crawling legs of Nepidae are secondary or symplesiomorphic characters, which cannot serve as the evidence for the sister group role of Nepoidea to the remaining nepomorphans.

Members of the family Scutelleridae (Heteroptera: Pentatomomorpha: Pentatomoidea) are also called shield bugs because of the greatly enlarged scutellum, or jewel bugs because of the brilliant colours of many species. All scutellerids are phytophagous, feeding on various parts of their host plants. Due to lack of obvious synapomorphies and the failure to apply rigorous phylogenetic methods, the higher classification of Scutelleridae has been disputed for more than 150 years. Here we reconstructed a phylogeny of Scutelleridae based on complete sequences of 18S and 28S nuclear rDNAs and all 13 protein-coding genes of the mitochondrial genome, with the sampled taxa covering all of the currently recognized subfamilies. The monophyly of Scutelleridae was confirmed by the congruence of the results of analyses conducted using Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony. The phylogenetic relationships among subfamilies were well resolved for the first time. Furthermore, timedivergence studies estimated that the time of origin of Scutelleridae was in the Early Cretaceous (142.1-122.8 Ma), after the origin of the angiosperms. The diversification between the extant subfamilies of Scutelleridae and within the subfamilies occurred from the late Palaeocene to the late Miocene, simultaneously with the rise of the major groups of angiosperms and other phytophagous insects.

More than 95% of phytophagous true bug (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) species belong to four superfamilies: Miroidea (Cimicomorpha), Pentatomoidea, Coreoidea, and Lygaeoidea (all Pentatomomorpha). These iconic groups of highly diverse, overwhelmingly phytophagous insects include several economically prominent agricultural and silvicultural pest species, though their evolutionary history has not yet been well resolved. In particular, superfamily-and family-level phylogenetic relationships of these four lineages have remained controversial, and the divergence times of some crucial nodes for phytophagous true bugs have hitherto been little known, which hampers a better understanding of the evolutionary processes and patterns of phytophagous insects. In the present study, we used 150 species and concatenated nuclear and mitochondrial protein-coding genes and rRNA genes to infer the phylogenetic relationships within the Terheteroptera (Cimicomorpha + Pentatomomorpha) and estimated their divergence times. Our results support the monophyly of Cimicomorpha, Pentatomomorpha, Miroidea, Pentatomoidea, Pyrrhocoroidea, Coreoidea, and Lygaeoidea. The phylogenetic relationships across phytophagous lineages are largely congruent at deep nodes across the analyses based on different datasets and tree-reconstructing methods with just a few exceptions. Estimated divergence times and ancestral state reconstructions for feeding habit indicate that phytophagous true bugs explosively radiated in the Early Cretaceous-shortly after the angiosperm radiation-with the subsequent diversification of the most speciose clades (Mirinae, Pentatomidae, Coreinae, and Rhyparochromidae) in the Late Cretaceous.

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