Phylogenomics provides strong evidence for the relationships of butterflies and moths

Butterflies and moths constitute some of the most popular and charismatic insects. Lepidoptera include approximately 160 000 described species, many of which are important model organisms. Previous studies on the evolution of Lepidoptera did not confidently place butterflies, and many relationships among superfamilies in the megadiverse clade Ditrysia remain largely uncertain. We generated a molecular dataset with 46 taxa, combining 33 new transcriptomes with 13 available genomes, transcriptomes and expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Using HaMStR with a Lepidoptera-specific core-orthologue set of single copy loci, we identified 2696 genes for inclusion into the phylogenomic analysis. Nucleotides and amino acids of the all-gene, all-taxon dataset yielded nearly identical, well-supported trees. Monophyly of butterflies (Papilionoidea) was strongly supported, and the group included skippers (Hesperiidae) and the enigmatic butterfly–moths (Hedylidae). Butterflies were placed sister to the rema...

蝴蝶与蛾类是最具人气且辨识度极高的昆虫类群。鳞翅目（Lepidoptera）目前已描述的物种约有16万种，其中大量类群为重要的模式生物。过往针对鳞翅目演化的研究未能明确界定蝴蝶的系统发育位置，且该巨型支系双孔亚目（Ditrysia）内多个总科间的演化关系仍未得到明确解析。本研究构建了涵盖46个类群的分子数据集，将33个新生成的转录组与13个已公开的基因组、转录组及表达序列标签（ESTs）进行整合。我们使用针对鳞翅目特异性单拷贝基因座核心直系同源基因集的HaMStR工具，筛选得到2696个基因用于系统发育基因组学分析。全基因全类群数据集的核苷酸与氨基酸序列分别构建的系统发育树结果高度一致，且支持度优异。蝴蝶总科（Papilionoidea）的单系性得到强烈支持，该类群涵盖弄蝶科（Hesperiidae）与神秘的蝶蛾类（Hedylidae）。蝴蝶被确定为其余类群的姐妹群……