Museum archives revisited: Central Asiatic hawkmoths reveal exceptionally high late Pliocene species diversification (Lepidoptera, Sphingidae)

Abstract

Three high‐elevation Hyles species of Central Asia have proven difficult to sample, and thus, only a limited number of specimens are available for study. Ancient DNA techniques were applied to sequence two mitochondrial genes from ‘historic’ museum specimens of Hyles gallii, Hyles renneri and Hyles salangensis to elucidate the phylogenetic relationships of these species. This approach enabled us to include the holotypes and paratypes. The status of H. salangensis as a species endemic to a mountain range north of Kabul in Afghanistan is confirmed by this study. It is most closely related to Hyles nicaea and H. gallii, and quite distant from the clade comprising the species from Hyles vespertilio to Hyles tithymali, despite this group and H. salangensis both completely lacking an arolium on the pretarsus. Our results show that the samples assigned to H. renneri and Hyles livornica tatsienluica are conspecific and so we reinstate Hyles tatsienluica stat. nov. as the valid name for this species and synonymize H. renneri syn. nov. with it. This study shows that the distribution range postulated for H. tatsienluica extends from Nepal well into the mountains of south‐western China. The distribution ranges of H. livornica and H. tatsienluica overlap. The study confirms the previously proposed synonymies of Hyles nepalensis, Hyles gallii intermedia and Hyles gallii tibetanica with H. gallii. Extensive species sampling (over 80% of Hyles species) in this study allowed additional analyses. The dated phylogeny reveals the global Hyles hawkmoth radiation to be much more recent than previously thought: it began in the Late Miocene and culminated in a Pleistocene burst of diversification in the Northern Hemisphere. Ancestral ranges of basal nodes were reconstructed as highly equivocal, but the Neotropics has the highest probability in the two oldest nodes. Although the origins of the Madagascan and Australian species also remain ambiguous, a large crown clade of fifteen species was reconstructed to have originated in the Palaearctic. The wide distribution ranges of the two migratory species, H. livornica and H. gallii, appear to blur any traces of the biogeographic origin of the clades containing these species. Specialization in larval host plant use onto particular plant families from the ancestral condition ‘polyphagous’ may have led to an increased rate of speciation and phylogenetic diversification in three subgroups of Hyles (the Hawaiian clade, the Hyles centralasiae group and the Hyles euphorbiae complex).

Shotgun sequencing decades-old lichen specimens to resolve phylogenomic placement of type material

“…Ongoing developments with DNA sequencing technologies are enabling researchers to tap into genetic data that were previously inaccessible (Cooper 1994;Lan & Lindqvist 2019). Incorporating genetic data from natural history collections representing rare/threatened species and species that are otherwise hard to access into genetic-based analyses can provide critical insights (Heckeberg et al 2016;Hundsdoerfer et al 2017;McGuire et al 2018). For example, genetic data from museum specimens has been used to track temporal and spatial changes in species distributions (Lozier & Cameron 2009), investigate population genetics (Spurgin et al 2014;Schmid et al 2018), and evaluate conservation implications (Anco et al 2018;Brandt et al 2018).…”

Two new native larval host plants of Hyles annei (Guérin-Méneville, 1839) (Lepidoptera, Sphingidae) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile following exceptional summer rainfall

“…Although feeding on Nyctaginaceae by larvae of H. annei was already recorded (Butler 1882;Moss 1912), this is the first confirmed record of A. incarnata as a host of this hawkmoth. Species of Zygophyllaceae have been recorded as host plants of three species of Hyles Hübner, (1819) (Robinson et al 2010;Hundsdoerfer et al 2017); however, this is the first confirmed record of a representative of the Zygophyllaceae as a host plant of H. annei. As A. incarnata is distributed from the United States to Argentina and Chile (Turner 1994), it could be used by H. annei throughout its range.…”

“…The Neotropical hawkmoth, Hyles annei (Guérin-Méneville, 1839) (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae: Macroglossinae: Macroglossini), is known from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru (Ureta and Donoso 1956;Haxaire and Herbin 1999;Cock and Boos 2006;Moré et al 2014), where it has been found in a wide range of habitats from sea level to more than 2000 m elevation (Hundsdoerfer et al 2009;Juárez and González 2016). It is a polyphagous species (Hundsdoerfer et al 2017); however, its native host plant range has not been studied in detail in most of its geographic distribution. In Chile, Butler (1882) recorded "Oxybaptrus parviflorus", probably involving one of the eight species of Mirabilis Riv.…”

Twenty-six new species of Hoploscopa (Lepidoptera, Crambidae) from South-East Asia revealed by morphology and DNA barcoding

“…DNA concentration of old samples was measured with a NanoDropOne spectrophotometer. We followed a workflow previously used by other authors (Hebert et al 2013, Mitchell 2015, Hundsdoerfer et al 2017) by amplifying up to five short overlapping fragments covering the COI barcode part (see Suppl. material 1: Fig.…”