Heteroptera are among the most diverse hemimetabolous insects. Seven infraorders have been recognized within this suborder of Hemiptera. Apart from the well-established sister-group relationship between Cimicomorpha and Pentatomomorpha (= Terheteroptera), the two terminal lineages, the relationships among the other five infraorders are still controversial, of which three (Gerromorpha, Nepomorpha and Leptopodomorpha) are intimately connected to aquatic environments. However, the various and often conflicting available phylogeny hypotheses do not offer a clear background for a connection between diversification and palaeoenvironments. In this study, a molecular data set representing 79 taxa and 10 149 homologous sites is used to infer the phylogenetic relationships within Heteroptera. Bayesian inference, maximum-likelihood and maximum parsimony analyses were employed. The results of phylogenetic inferences largely confirm the widely accepted phylogenetic context. Estimation of the divergence time based on the phylogenetic results revealed that Gerromorpha, Nepomorpha and Leptopodomorpha originated successively during the period from the Late Permian to Early Triassic . This timescale is consistent with the origin and radiation time of various aquatic holometabolans. Our results indicate that the aquatic and semi-aquatic true bugs evolved under environmental conditions of high air temperature and humidity in an evolutionary scenario similar to that of the aquatic holometabolans.
The use of genetic distances to identify species within the framework of DNA barcoding has to some extent improved the development of biodiversity studies. However, using a fixed empirical threshold to delimit species may lead to overestimating species diversity. In this study, we use a new data set of COI sequences for 366 specimens within the genus of Cletus as well as conduct an analysis on the same genetic data for collected morphologically defined species from previous phylogeographical studies, to test whether high intraspecific genetic divergences are common with the premises of comprehensive sampling. The results indicate C. graminis Hsiao & Cheng , is the same species with C. punctiger (Dallas, 1852) and should be synonymized and that the distributional record of C. pugnator (Fabricius, 1787) in China is correct. High intraspecific genetic differentiations (0%-4.35%) were found in C. punctiger. Furthermore, as to the mined data, the maximum intraspecific K2P distances of 186 species (48.44% of 384) exceed 3%, and 101 species (26.30%) can be divided into two or more clusters with a threshold of 3% in cluster analysis. If genetic distance is used to delimit species boundaries, the minimum interspecific K2P distance of the congeneric species should be considered rather than only using the fixed empirical value; otherwise, the species richness may be overestimated in some cases.
Members of the genus Leptocorisa have for long been known as major pests of rice in the East region (China, 2009) and most Leptocorisa species feed on rice, with some species seriously damaged pest in southern China and adjoining countries (Ahmad, 1965;Hsiao et al., 1977;Litsinger et al., 2015). Rice seed bugs are one of the few pests that feed directly on developing rice spikelets in the field (Litsinger et al., 2015). It is reported that adults and nymphs suck out the developing rice grains at the
Coreoidea (Insecta: Hemiptera: Heteroptera) is a widely distributed and agriculturally important bugs. However, the phylogeny of Coreoidea lacked consensus on higher‐level relationships and several studies by comparative morphological characters and molecular data suggested the non‐monophyly of two families: Coreidae and Alydidae. The mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) has long been thought to be a significant marker to understand phylogenetic relationships, but the mitogenome in Alydidae is scarce to date. In the present study, we gathered the mitogenomes of 28 species from four families of Coreoidea excluding Hyocephalidae (Alydidae, Coreidae, Rhopalidae, and Stenocephalidae), including four newly sequenced mitogenomes of Alydidae, and conducted mitogenomic organization and phylogenetic studies. We used maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods to infer the higher‐level phylogeny from the perspective of mitogenomes, primarily to investigate the phylogenetic relationship betweeen Coreidae and Alydidae. We add evidence that neither Alydidae nor Coreidae are monophyletic based on mitogenomes. Newly sequenced mitogenomes of Alydidae have traditional gene structure and gene rearrangement was not found. Alydinae was always recovered as closely related to Pseudophloeinae of the coreid subfamily with high support. The placement of the coreid subfamily Hydarinae and alydid subfamily Micrelytrinae are unstable depending on approach used. In terms of the length and nucleotide composition of the protein coding genes in mitogenomes, Pseudophloeinae and Hydarinae of coreid were more similar to Alydidae. The unsettled classification issues of Coreidae and Alydidae by mitogenomes were demonstrated in this work, indicating that further study is needed.
Kleidocerys resedae resedae (Panzer, 1797) (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Lygaeoidea: Lygaeidae: Ischnorhynchinae) is one of the destructive insect pests of birch and alder trees in Holarctic. Here we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of this pest, also representing the first mitochondrial genome of the family Lygaeidae. This genome is 14,688 bp long, with an A+T content of 76.0%, containing 37 typical animal mitochondrial genes and a control region. All genes were arranged in the same gene order as most of other Heteropteran species. Presently, the length of this mitochondrial genome is the shortest among all available Hemipterans, mainly because of its short control region (220 bp). The unusual intergenic spacer between tRNA-His and ND4, only shared by Lygaeoidea, was also found in K. resedae resedae, which supports that this spacer may be the synapomorphy of Lygaeoidea.
In this paper, the genus Grypocephalus Hsiao, 1963 is taxonomically reviewed worldwide. Bloeteocoris Ahmad, 1965 is proposed as a new junior synonym for Grypocephalus Hsiao, 1963. All the species of Bloeteocoris Ahmad, 1965 are herein transferred to Grypocephalus Hsiao, 1963, in which, Bloeteocoris minutus Ahmad, 1965 is synonymized with Grypocephalus pallipectus Hsiao, 1963. Planusocoris schaeferi gen. & sp. nov. of Leptocorisini is described as new to science. Photographs of adults, and illustrations of male and female genitalia of the involved species are provided. The genera of the world Leptocorisini are keyed. The type specimens of P. schaeferi sp. nov. are deposited in the Insect Collection, Institute of Entomology, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
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