Preliminary phylogenomic analysis of Cicindelidae: Testing the monophyly of Manticorini

The family Cicindelidae, commonly known as tiger beetles, has yet to receive an extensive phylogenomic analysis. The hereto most comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the family using data from 9 gene fragments united all uniformly colored, nocturnal, large-bodied, and flightless species together into a clade. Thus, Manticorini sensu Duran and Gough expanded the tribe into its broadest sense to accommodate this grouping which includes: the African genera Manticora, Mantica, and Platychile; the South American genus Picnochile; and the North American genera Amblycheila and Omus. Here we utilize ultraconserved elements (UCE) to produce an integrative dataset combining transcriptomic-, genomic-, and targeted-capture read data for phylogenomic analysis. The focus of this study was to test the monophyly of the tribe Manticorini sensu Duran and Gough for which our taxon sampling is complete at the genus-level. However, our sampling also represents the most extensive phylogenomic analysis of the family Cicindelidae to date, including a minimum of three representatives from all currently recognized tribes. UCE data was assembled into two sets of completeness matrices with varying levels of missing data. The 60% and 75% complete matrices were then subjected to two different trimming regimes. Matrices were then kept either as individual loci or concatenated for subsequent phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, and a summary coalescent-based method. The results of our study highlight the importance of data exploration when performing phylogenomic analysis and calls for revision of the constituent genera of the tribe Manticorini.