SECOND project
Reconstruction the skeleton phylogenetic hypothesis of Erebidae
I already have a skeleton phylogenetic hypothesis for the superfamily Noctuoidea, which suggests that there are 6 strongly supported lineages, which I (along with my co-authors) are calling families: Oenosandridae, Notodontidae, Erebidae, Nolidae, Euteliidae and Noctuidae. Of these, Erebidae is in greatest need of detailed study. The family comprises some 40,000 species and while it is a strongly supported clade, the relationships within the clade are not clear with my limited sampling at the moment. Thus, for my second project, I will concentrate on the family Erebidae. By increasing the sampling of this species-rich family, I hope to get an understanding of the major lineages within the family and their relationships. In spite of limited sampling in the initial project, our results strongly suggested that many of the traditional subfamilies and tribes in family Erebidae are para- or even polyphyletic entities (e.g. Catocalinae, Erebinae, Calpinae and Phytometrinae). In addition, in the initial project, a few subfamilies and tribes were represented by only one taxon, mainly the type genus. It is highly likely that some, if not many, of these taxa will turn out to be non-monophyletic, as it is becoming clear that morphological features have not been very informative for classification except in a few cases. As a consequence, the centre of concentration in my second project will be figuring out the major lineages of Erebidae family. Most critical samples for the second project have already been acquired and DNA extracted. Besides, many more samples from SE Asia (Malayisa), N Iran (Golestan forests), Papua New Guinea and Africa (Tanzania) have been collected and will soon be sent to me. Parts of this project will be done in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Zaspel (University of Minnesota), who is working on the tribe Calpini that includes the famous vampire moths (adult moths feed on mammalian blood), using morphological data.
