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Nymphalid butterflies diversify following near demise at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary

Niklas Wahlberg1,2,*, Julien Leneveu1, Ullasa Kodandaramaiah2, Carlos Peña2, Sören Nylin2, André V. L. Freitas3 and Andrew V. Z. Brower4

+ Author Affiliations

1Laboratory of Genetics, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland

2Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

3Departamento de Biologia Animal and Museu de Zoologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, CP 6109, Campinas, SP 13083-970, Brazil

4Department of Biology, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA

*Author for correspondence (niklas.wahlberg@utu.fi).
Abstract

The butterfly family Nymphalidae contains some of the most important non-drosophilid insect model systems for evolutionary and ecological studies, yet the evolutionary history of the group has remained shrouded in mystery. We have inferred a robust phylogenetic hypothesis based on sequences of 10 genes and 235 morphological characters for exemplars of 400 of the 540 valid nymphalid genera representing all major lineages of the family. By dating the branching events, we infer that Nymphalidae originated in the Cretaceous at 90 Ma, but that the ancestors of 10–12 lineages survived the end-Cretaceous catastrophe in the Neotropical and Oriental regions. Patterns of diversification suggest extinction of lineages at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary (65 Ma) and subsequent elevated speciation rates in the Tertiary.

Lepidoptera Nymphalidae mass extinction times of divergence diversification
Footnotes

Received July 22, 2009.
Accepted September 7, 2009.
© 2009 The Royal Society

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B

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