Most eukaryotic organisms are arthropods. Yet, their diversity in rich terrestrial ecosystems is still unknown. Here we produce tangible estimates of the total species richness of arthropods in a tropical rainforest. Using a comprehensive range of structured protocols, we sampled the phylogenetic breadth of arthropod taxa from the soil to the forest canopy in the San Lorenzo forest, Panama. We collected 6144 arthropod species from 0.48 hectare and extrapolated total species richness to larger areas on the basis of competing models. The whole 6000-hectare forest reserve most likely sustains 25,000 arthropod species. Notably, just 1 hectare of rainforest yields >60% of the arthropod biodiversity held in the wider landscape. Models based on plant diversity fitted the accumulated species richness of both herbivore and nonherbivore taxa exceptionally well. This lends credence to global estimates of arthropod biodiversity developed from plant models.

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Arthropod diversity in a tropical forest

© 2015 The Authors. Systematic Entomology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Entomological Society
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionߚNonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

The beetle tree of life reveals that Coleoptera survived end‐Permian mass extinction to diversify during the Cretaceous terrestrial revolution

Background 
Higher-level relationships within the Lepidoptera, and particularly within the species-rich subclade Ditrysia, are generally not well understood, although recent studies have yielded progress We present the most comprehensive molecular analysis of lepidopteran phylogeny to date, focusing on relationships among superfamilies


Methodology / Principal Findings 
483 taxa spanning 115 of 124 families were sampled for 19 protein-coding nuclear genes, from which maximum likelihood tree estimates and bootstrap percentages were obtained using GARLI Assessment of heuristic search effectiveness showed that better trees and higher bootstrap percentages probably remain to be discovered even after 1000 or more search replicates, but further search proved impractical even with grid computing Other analyses explored the effects of sampling nonsynonymous change only versus partitioned and unpartitioned total nucleotide change; deletion of rogue taxa; and compositional heterogeneity Relationships among the non-ditrysian lineages previously inferred from morphology were largely confirmed, plus some new ones, with strong support Robust support was also found for divergences among non-apoditrysian lineages of Ditrysia, but only rarely so within Apoditrysia Paraphyly for Tineoidea is strongly supported by analysis of nonsynonymous-only signal; conflicting, strong support for tineoid monophyly when synonymous signal was added back is shown to result from compositional heterogeneity


Conclusions / Significance 
Support for among-superfamily relationships outside the Apoditrysia is now generally strong Comparable support is mostly lacking within Apoditrysia, but dramatically increased bootstrap percentages for some nodes after rogue taxon removal, and concordance with other evidence, strongly suggest that our picture of apoditrysian phylogeny is approximately correct This study highlights the challenge of finding optimal topologies when analyzing hundreds of taxa It also shows that some nodes get strong support only when analysis is restricted to nonsynonymous change, while total change is necessary for strong support of others Thus, multiple types of analyses will be necessary to fully resolve lepidopteran phylogeny

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A Large-Scale, Higher-Level, Molecular Phylogenetic Study of the Insect Order Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies)

A Comprehensive and Dated Phylogenomic Analysis of Butterflies

Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are one of the major superradiations of insects, comprising nearly 160,000 described extant species. As herbivores, pollinators, and prey, Lepidoptera play a fundamental role in almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Lepidoptera are also indicators of environmental change and serve as models for research on mimicry and genetics. They have been central to the development of coevolutionary hypotheses, such as butterflies with flowering plants and moths' evolutionary arms race with echolocating bats. However, these hypotheses have not been rigorously tested, because a robust lepidopteran phylogeny and timing of evolutionary novelties are lacking. To address these issues, we inferred a comprehensive phylogeny of Lepidoptera, using the largest dataset assembled for the order (2,098 orthologous protein-coding genes from transcriptomes of 186 species, representing nearly all superfamilies), and dated it with carefully evaluated synapomorphy-based fossils. The oldest members of the Lepidoptera crown group appeared in the Late Carboniferous (∼300 Ma) and fed on nonvascular land plants. Lepidoptera evolved the tube-like proboscis in the Middle Triassic (∼241 Ma), which allowed them to acquire nectar from flowering plants. This morphological innovation, along with other traits, likely promoted the extraordinary diversification of superfamily-level lepidopteran crown groups. The ancestor of butterflies was likely nocturnal, and our results indicate that butterflies became day-flying in the Late Cretaceous (∼98 Ma). Moth hearing organs arose multiple times before the evolutionary arms race between moths and bats, perhaps initially detecting a wide range of sound frequencies before being co-opted to specifically detect bat sonar. Our study provides an essential framework for future comparative studies on butterfly and moth evolution.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/45/22657.full.pdf

Phylogenomics Reveals the Evolutionary Timing and Pattern of Butterflies and Moths

van Nieukerken, Erik J.; Kaila, Lauri; Kitching, Ian J.; Kristensen, Niels Peder; Lees, David C.; Minet, Joël; Mitter, Charles; Mutanen, Marko; Regier, Jerome C.; Simonsen, Thomas J.; Wahlberg, Niklas; Yen, Shen-Horn; Zahiri, Reza; Adamski, David; Baixeras, Joaquin; Bartsch, Daniel; Bengtsson, Bengt Å.; Brown, John W.; Bucheli, Sibyl Rae; Davis, Donald R.; de Prins, Jurate; de Prins, Willy; Epstein, Marc E.; Gentili-Poole, Patricia; Gielis, Caes; Hättenschwiler, Peter; Hausmann, Axel; Holloway, Jeremy D.; Kallies, Axel; Karsholt, Ole; Kawahara, Akito Y.; Koster, Sjaak; Kozlov, Mikhail; Lafontaine, J. Donald; Lamas, Gerardo; Landry, JeanFrançois; Lee, Sangmi; Nuss, Matthias; Park, Kyu-Tek; Penz, Carla; Rota, Jadranka; Schintlmeister, Alexander; Schmidt, B. Christian; Sohn, Jae-Cheon; Solis, M. Alma; Tarmann, Gerhard M.; Warren, Andrew D.; Weller, Susan; Yakovlev, Roman V.; Zolotuhin, Vadim V.; Zwick, Andreas

/pdf/order-lepidoptera-linnaeus-1758-in-zhang-z-q-ed-animal-2cq751huxw.pdf

Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758. In : Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness

Peter Hättenschwiler

Papers

Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758. In : Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness