Phylogenomics of the family Lachesillidae (Insecta: Psocodea: Psocomorpha)

Abstract

Lachesillidae is one of the largest families of bark lice and includes more than 420 described species, in 26 genera and three subfamilies. This family belongs in the suborder Psocomorpha, infraorder Homilopsocidea. The classification of Lachesillidae is based on male and female genital morphologies, but questions remain regarding the monophyly of the family and some of its genera. Here, we used whole genome and transcriptome data to generate a 2060 orthologous gene data matrix of 2,438,763 aligned bp and used these data to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of species of Lachesillidae and relatives. Taxon sampling included 24 species from Lachesillidae and 23 additional species belonging to related families from the infraorders Homilopsocidea and Caeciliusetae. Phylogenetic relationships reconstructed with maximum likelihood and coalescent-based analyses indicated paraphyly of Lachesillidae, and monophyly of the tribe Graphocaeciliini and the genus Lachesilla were also never recovered. Instability was observed in the position of Eolachesilla chilensis, which was recovered either as sister to Elipsocidae or to Mesopsocidae species, so we cannot conclusively determine the position of this genus within the Homilopsocidea. Given our results, a reclassification is necessary, but more taxon sampling of other species in Mesopsocidae and Peripsocidae would be useful to add to a tree in future before proposing a new classification.