Phylogenomics and biogeography of North American Trechine cave beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

Cave trechines beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Trechini) are members of cave communities globally and important models for understanding the colonization of caves, adaptation to cave life, and the diversification of cave-adapted lineages. In eastern North America, cave trechines are the most species-rich group of terrestrial troglobionts, hypothesized to comprise over 150 taxa in six genera with no extant surface members. Previous studies have hypothesized that the Pleistocene climate change was a major driver of cave colonization and diversification in the temperate terrestrial cave fauna in this region. However, our time-calibrated molecular phylogeny resulting from the analysis of 16,794 bases from 68 Ultraconserved Elements (UCEs) loci for 45 species of the clade supports an alternative hypothesis whereby cave colonization of the surface ancestor of eastern North American cave trechines likely began in the early Miocene in the Appalachians Ridge and Valley (APP) and dispersed into t..., , , # Data from: Phylogenomics and Biogeography of North American Trechine Cave Beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj3tx967w](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj3tx967w)

## Description of the data and file structure

We collected specimens of 45 cave trechine taxa from caves in the APP, ILP, and OZK, including 41 species of *Pseudanophthalmus* from 20 of the 26 species groups defined by Barr (2004), as well as *Ameroduvalius jeanneli*, *Darlingtonea kentuckensis*, *Neaphaenops tellkampfi*, and *Nelsonites jonesi*. We were not able to obtain specimens of *Nelsonites walteri* nor both species of *Xenotrechus*. Beetles were collected from terrestrial and riparian cave habitats, such as mud banks, the splash zones of active drips, near streams and rimstone pools, underneath rocks and coarse woody debris, or within cobble and gravel. Two species of the genus *Trechus — T. obtusus* and *T. humbolti —* and *Trechoblemus westcotti* were included as outgroups.

To generate...