The first phylogeny of Australasian Lamiinae longhorn beetles

We used phylogenomic data and information from the beetle fossil record to reconstruct the phylogeny and historical biogeography of Australasian longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae) in the subfamily Lamiinae. We further focused our study on the distribution of proposed diagnostic morphological characters in Lamiinae, and on the phylogeny of Rhytiphora Audinet-Serville, Australia’s most species-rich genus of longhorn beetles. Lamiinae was monophyletic, but the majority of tribes were poly- or paraphyletic. Within Lamiinae, we recovered four main clades, including one clade mostly comprised of Australian endemic genera of probable Gondwanan origin. This clade also contained taxa that dispersed from Australia to New Zealand and experienced multiple independent instances of wing loss. Another of the four clades contained Australian genera that colonised the region from Asia, including Rhytiphora. The defining feature of Rhytiphora, the setose “sex patches” on the male abdomen, was shared with ma...