Title |
Loss of flight promotes beetle diversification
|
---|---|
Published in |
Nature Communications, January 2012
|
DOI | 10.1038/ncomms1659 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Hiroshi Ikeda, Masaaki Nishikawa, Teiji Sota |
Abstract |
The evolution of flight is a key innovation that may enable the extreme diversification of insects. Nonetheless, many species-rich, winged insect groups contain flightless lineages. The loss of flight may promote allopatric differentiation due to limited dispersal power and may result in a high speciation rate in the flightless lineage. Here we show that loss of flight accelerates allopatric speciation using carrion beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae). We demonstrate that flightless species retain higher genetic differentiation among populations and comprise a higher number of genetically distinct lineages than flight-capable species, and that the speciation rate with the flightless state is twice that with the flight-capable state. Moreover, a meta-analysis of 51 beetle species from 15 families reveals higher genetic differentiation among populations in flightless compared with flight-capable species. In beetles, which represent almost one-fourth of all described species, repeated evolution of flightlessness may have contributed to their steady diversification since the Mesozoic era. |
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Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Japan | 10 | 27% |
United Kingdom | 1 | 3% |
Canada | 1 | 3% |
Unknown | 25 | 68% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 35 | 95% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 3% |
Scientists | 1 | 3% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Japan | 7 | 3% |
United States | 6 | 2% |
Brazil | 2 | <1% |
Spain | 2 | <1% |
France | 1 | <1% |
Peru | 1 | <1% |
Germany | 1 | <1% |
Netherlands | 1 | <1% |
Greece | 1 | <1% |
Other | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 233 | 91% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 52 | 20% |
Researcher | 47 | 18% |
Student > Master | 34 | 13% |
Student > Bachelor | 27 | 11% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 18 | 7% |
Other | 49 | 19% |
Unknown | 29 | 11% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 164 | 64% |
Environmental Science | 21 | 8% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 19 | 7% |
Engineering | 6 | 2% |
Earth and Planetary Sciences | 3 | 1% |
Other | 8 | 3% |
Unknown | 35 | 14% |