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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Systematic Entomology Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #305719
Title: Phylogeny, evolution, and classification of gall wasps: the plot thickens

Author
item RONQUIST, F. - The Swedish Museum Of Natural History
item NIEVES-ALDREY, J. - University Of Madrid
item Buffington, Matthew
item LIU, Z. - Eastern Illinois University
item LILJEBLAD, J. - Swedish University
item NYLANDER, J. - Linkoping University

Submitted to: PLOS ONE
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/28/2015
Publication Date: 5/20/2015
Publication URL: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123301
Citation: Ronquist, F., Nieves-Aldrey, J.L., Buffington, M.L., Liu, Z., Liljeblad, J., Nylander, J. 2015. Phylogeny, evolution, and classification of gall wasps: The plot thickens. PLoS One. 10(5):e0123301.

Interpretive Summary: Galls wasps and their relatives can be both beneficial and pestiferous to agriculture worldwide. This paper presents novel data on the family tree of gall wasps,and uses this data to infer their evolutionary origin. Additionally,this paper explores the current classification of gall wasps, makes the necessary changes to improve the classification. The data presented here will be useful for predicting which gall wasps are potential pests,and which may be beneficial species. Taxonomists, biological control workers and ecologists interested in gall wasp evolution, biology and taxonomy will use data published in this paper.

Technical Abstract: Gall wasps (Cynipidae) represent the most spectacular radiation of gall-inducing insects. In addition to true gall formers, gall wasps also include phytophagous inquilines, which live inside the galls induced by gall wasps or other insects. Here we present the first comprehensive molecular and total-evidence analyses of higher-level gall wasp relationships. We studied more than 100 taxa representing a rich selection of outgroups and the majority of described cynipid genera outside the diverse oak gall wasps (Cynipini), which were more sparsely sampled. About 5 kb of nucleotide data from one mitochondrial (COI) and four nuclear (28S, LWRh, EF1aF1, and EF1aF2) markers were analyzed separately and in combination with morphological and life-history data. According to previous morphology-based studies, gall wasps evolved in the Northern Hemisphere and were initially herb gallers. Inquilines originated once from gall inducers that lost the ability to initiate galls. Our results, albeit not conclusive, suggest a completely different scenario. The first gall wasps were more likely associated with woody host plants, and their early radiation may have occurred in the Southern Hemisphere. There must have been multiple origins of gall inducers, inquilines or both. One possibility is that gall inducers arose independently from inquilines in several lineages. Except for these surprising results, our analyses are largely consistent with previous studies. They confirm that gall wasps are conservative in their host-plant preferences, and that herb-galling lineages have radiated repeatedly onto the same set of unrelated host plants. We propose a revised classification of the family into twelve tribes, which are strongly supported as monophyletic across independent datasets. Four are new: Aulacideini, Phanacidini, Diastrophini and Ceroptresini. We present a key to the tribes and discuss their morphological and biological diversity. Until the relationships among the tribes are resolved, the origin and early evolution of gall wasps will remain unclear.