Mitochondrial genomes of two Australian fishflies with an evolutionary timescale of Chauliodinae

Abstract

Abstract Fishflies (Corydalidae: Chauliodinae) with a total of ca. 130 extant species are one of the major groups of the holometabolous insect order Megaloptera. As a group which originated during the Mesozoic, the phylogeny and historical biogeography of fishflies are of high interest. The previous hypothesis on the evolutionary history of fishflies was based primarily on morphological data. To further test the existing phylogenetic relationships and to understand the divergence pattern of fishflies, we conducted a molecule-based study. We determined the complete mitochondrial (mt) genomes of two Australian fishfly species, Archichauliodes deceptor Kimmins, 1954 and Protochauliodes biconicus Kimmins, 1954, both members of a major subgroup of Chauliodinae with high phylogenetic significance. A phylogenomic analysis was carried out based on 13 mt protein coding genes (PCGs) and two rRNAs genes from the megalopteran species with determined mt genomes. Both maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses recovered the Dysmicohermes clade as the sister group of the Archichauliodes clade + the Protochauliodes clade, which is consistent with the previous morphology-based hypothesis. The divergence time estimation suggested that the divergence among the three major subgroups of fishflies occurred during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous when the supercontinent Pangaea was undergoing sequential breakup.