Unveiling the evolutionary history of a puzzling antlion genus Gatzara Navás (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae: Dendroleontinae) based on systematic revision, molecular phylogenetics, and biogeographic inference

The antlion genus Gatzara Navás, 1915 is one of the major lineages of the
subfamily Dendroleontinae Banks, 1899 (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae) from
Asia, but having chaotic background of systematics. Here we present a
comprehensive systematic revision and mitochondrial phylogenomic analysis
to clarify the identity and to unravel the evolutionary history of this
genus. Combining morphological and molecular evidence, we separate the
species of Gatzara into two clades, and most of these species are
transferred to the genus Nepsalus Navás, 1912 herein restored. The dated
phylogeny with ancestral area reconstruction indicates that the common
ancestor of Gatzara and Nepsalus might have been widely distributed in
East Asia and these two genera might have diverged during the late
Miocene. The speciation of most Nepsalus species that are allopatric in
distribution might have been driven by a series of vicarience events
related to the rise of the Himalayas and the formation of the major
islands of East Asia during the late Miocene and Pliocene. A new species,
namely N. chikuni sp. n., is described from Tibet. New taxonomic changes
include the six new combinations: N. caelestis (Krivokhatsky, 1997) comb.
n., N. decorillus (Yang, 1997) comb. n., N. decorosus (Yang, 1988) comb.
n., N. indicus (Navás, 1914) comb. n., N. insolitus (Walker, 1860) comb.
n., N. jezoensis (Okamoto, 1910) comb. n., and N. petrophilus (Miller
& Stange, 1999) comb. n.