A phylogeny of the damselfly genus Calopteryx (Odonata) using mitochondrial 16S rDNA markers

We seek to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of the damselfly genu s Calopteryx, for which extensive behavioral and morphological knowledge al ready exists. To date, analyses of the evolutionary pathways of different l ife history traits have been hampered by the absence of a robust phylogeny based on morphological data. In this study, we concentrate on establishing phylogenetic information from parts of the 16S rDNA gene, which we sequence d for nine Calopteryx species and five outgroup species. The mt 16S rDNA da ta set did not show signs of saturated variation for ingroup taxa, and phyl ogenetic reconstructions were insensitive to variation of outgroup taxa. Pa rsimony, neighbor-joining, and maximum-likelihood reconstructions agreed on parts of the tree. A consensus tree summarizes the significant results and indicates problematic nodes. The 16S rDNA sequences support monophyly of t he genera Mnais, Matrona, and Calopteryx. However, the genus Calopteryx may not be monophyletic, since Matrona basilaris and Calopteryx atrata are sis ter taxa under every parameter setting. The North American and European tax a each appear as monophyletic clades, while the Asian Calopteryx atrata and Calopteryx cornelia are not monophyletic. Our data implies a different pal eobiogeographic history of the Eurasian and North American species, with ex tant Eurasian species complexes shaped by glacial periods, in contrast to e xtant North American species groups. (C) 2000 Academic Press.