Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships Of The Main Lineages Of Nymphalidae (Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera) Based On Mitochondrial 16S, 12S RDNA And Their Combined Sequences

Nymphalidae is one of an important families of Lepidoptera which is attractive to us and deserves our much attention. But up to now, the researches on Nymphalidae, especially about their phylogeney are rather less than those on other major groups of butterflies. Their origins, phylogenetic positions as well as their phylogenetic relationships have been debated for a long time. Based on their morphological characters, the taxonomic categories of Nymphalidae put forward by the scholars of China and abroad existed many differences. In recent years, as methods of the molecular phylogeny widely used in the studies of systematics and phylogeny of Nymphalidae, the basic phylogenetic patterns of them have been clarified. However, up to the present, these studies, especially about the taxa distributed in China is rather scarce.Firstly (chapter one), the brief reviews about their biological characteristics as well as their phylogenies were made in this paper.In chapter two and three, Fragments of mitochondrial 16S and 12S rDNA were amplified and sequenced for 27 species from 7 subfamilies of the Nymphalidae and 2 species of Danaidae. Combining 16S rDNA with the homologous sequences of other 6 species obtained from the GenBank(In chapter two), their sequence variations were analyzed using related genetic analysis softwares, meanwhile, using Parantica aglea and Euploea core as the outgroups, their phylogenetic trees were reconstructed by neighbor-joining (NJ) and Bayesian methods based on the single 16S rDNA, 12S rDNA and their combined sequences, respectively. The results of sequence variation analyses showed that of the aligned fragments of 16S rDNA was 494 bp in length, including 206 variable and 145 parsimonious informative sites, the percentage of A+T was 78.4%; the 12S rDNA was 514bp, including 166 variable and 123 parsimonious informative sites, the percentage of A+T was 86.1%; their combined sequence was 1037bp in length, including 369 variable and 261 parsimonious informative sites; the percentage of A+T was 82.6%. All these sequences showed a strong AT bias and a higher rate of transitions than that of transversions.Using Parantica aglea and Euploea core as the outgroups, the phylogenetic trees of the Nymphalidae taxa in this study were reconstructed with (NJ) and Bayesian methods based on 16S rDNA, 12S rDNA and their combined sequences. The results showed that the Nymphalinae was not monophyletic; the Junonia should be classified into Hypolimni; the Apaturinae, Byblinae and Nymphalinae were closely related to each other; the Pseudergolinae and Byblinae should be separated from Limenitinae. According to the types of molecular sequences we used, the obtained phylogenetic trees differed in some respects: the tree based on 16S rDNA showed that the Argynninae and Heliconniinae should be categorized into one subfamily; the tree of 12S rDNA showed that the Apaturinae, Byblinae Pseudergolinae and Argynninae +Limenitinae clade have much close relationships; the tree of combined sequences showed that the Argynninae and Limenitinae were sister to each other, Dichorragia nesimachus of the Pseudergolinae was closely related to the grouping of Argynninae +Limenitinae, Polyura narcaea of the Charaxinae was shown as the most basal clade of the Nymphlidae.