Molecular Phylogeny of Coprophanaeus (Megaphanaeus) d’Olsoufieff, 1924 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) and the position of C. bellicosus

Abstract

Coprophanaeus ( Megaphanaeus ) d’Olsoufieff, 1924 has four valid species: C. lancifer (Linne, 1767), C. ensifer (Germar, 1821), C. bonariensis (Gory, 1844) and C. bellicosus (Olivier, 1789). However, authors disagree about the placement of C. bellicosus . Thus, our aims were (I) to test if Megaphanaeus is a monophyletic group and (II) verify to which subgenus C. bellicosus belongs. We sequenced three mitochondrial and one nuclear marker for ten Phanaeini species: COI (672bp), COI-II (1326bp), 16S (527bp) and 28S (994bp). For fifteen species we sequenced two markers, COI (681pb) and 16S (532pb). Both matrices were analyzed under three methods of phylogenetic inference: Maximum Parsimony, Maximum Likelihood, and Bayesian Inference. Megaphanaeus is here considered monophyletic including C. bellicosus as sister-group to ( C. bonariensis ( C. lancifer + C. ensifer )). All analyses recovered the non-monophyly of both C. lancifer and C. ensifer , because of a population of C. lancifer grouped with C. ensifer specimens.