Pattern of morphological diversification in the Leptocarabus ground beetles (Coleoptera : Carabidae) as deduced from mitochondrial ND5 gene and nuclear 28S rDNA sequences

Most of the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 (ND5) gene and a par t of nuclear 28S ribosomal RNA gene were sequenced for 14 species of ground beetles belonging to the genus Leptocarabus. In both the ND5 and the 28S r DNA phylogenetic trees of Leptocarabus, three major lineages were recognize d: (1) L. marcilhaci/L. yokoae/Leptocarabus sp, from China, (2) L. koreanus /L. truncaticollis/L. seishinensis/L. semiopacus/L. canaliculatus/L. kurile nsis from the northern Eurasian continent including Korea and Hokkaido, Jap an, and (3) all of the Japanese species except L. kurilensis. Clustering of the species in the trees is largely linked to their geographic distributio n and does not correlate with morphological characters. The species belongi ng to different species groups are clustered in the same lineages, and thos e in the same species group are scattered among the different lineages. One of the possible interpretations of the present results would be that morph ological transformations independently took place in the different lineages , sometimes with accompanying parallel morphological evolution, resulting i n the occurrence of the morphological species belonging to the same species group (=type) in the different lineages.