Notomicrinae

Baca, Stephen M. & Short, Andrew E. Z., 2020, Molecular Phylogeny of the Notomicrine Water Beetles (Coleoptera: Noteridae) Reveals Signatures of Gondwanan Vicariance and Ecological Plasticity, Insect Systematics and Diversity (AIFB) 4 (6), No. 4, pp. 1-11 : 7-8

Notomicrinae

The recovered topologies across all analyses were consistent with those recovered in previous molecular phylogenetic estimates incorporating relevant notomicrine sampling, including Sangersequenced ( Kato et al. 2010, Toussaint et al. 2016, Baca et al. 2017b) and Ultraconserved elements ( Gustafson et al. 2020) datasets. While these previous studies did not sample extensively within Notomicrinae , they did recover Phreatodytes as sister to Notomicrus rather than sister to all other Noteridae , as has been suggested by some previous morphological studies (e.g., Belkaceme 1991; Beutel 1997; Miller et al. 2009; Dressler 2011; Beutel et al. 2006, 2020). The source of this conflict likely lies in the confounding effect of extreme morphological adaptation of Phreatodytes to stygobitic environments. Similar cases have been documented in diving beetles, where convergent evolution to subterranean environments has been shown to complicate the inference of relationships based on morphology alone (e.g., Leys et al. 2003, and see Miller and Bergsten 2016: 13). As discussed by Baca et al. (2017b) and Beutel et al. (2020), the molecular reconstruction of the noterid phylogeny implies several secondary losses and character reversals in the family. Given the congruence of molecular datasets, and as suggested by Baca et al. (2017b), a reassessment of noterid morphology is warranted see

Baca et al. (2017b) and Beutel et al. (2020) for more detailed discussions of these data source conflict.

The relationship of the cave-dwelling Speonoterus to other notomicrines remains untested with molecular data. The morphological similarity suggests Speonoterus is sister to Notomicrus , though it is also possible that Speonoterus is nested within Notomicrus (further discussed below). In any case, this relationship will be difficult to resolve without molecular data.