Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Outgroup selection

If you ever thought that selecting an external group for a phylogenetic analysis is an straightforward task let me warn you that you're wrong!
According to the genus' author, Apodrosus is a polydrusine closely related to Polydrusus. If you read one of the previous post about Polydrusus, you'll see that it is an entanglement of hooks...
A year ago I consulted Dr. Nikolai Yunakov, from the Russian Academy of Sciences who have worked with Palearctic Polydrusus; he told me that I should look for american species, so I did. I decided to include other polydrusines as Cautoderus and Polydrosodes that are distributed in Central America, in fact Charles O'Brien -curculionid specialist- suggested me that Polydrosodes could be closer to Apodrosus than Polydrusus.
Additionally as I had some experience with other entimine groups, I noticed the resemblance of Apodrosus with Anypotactus that belong to a different tribe, the Anypotactini; I also included another genus known to me -and very different from Anypotactus-, that is also present in the Caribbean: Polydacrys.
I also included one species of Sitona that is supposed to be the farthest relative among the outgroup.
This way, I prepared the dissections for 9 outgroup taxa, in order to choose and code the characters. I really didn't knew how many surprises were waiting for me...

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