Animal Sciences Commons^™

Global Phylogeny Of The Water Penny Beetles Using Both Molecular And Morphological Evidence (Co, Mathew Vincent Wood

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Psephenidae is a family of freshwater beetles usually found in swift streams worldwide. Their unique disc shaped and flattened larvae have made this a group of interest for scientists for centuries. Morphologically, this family has been relatively well researched, and systematically the family is fairly well known and supported as monophyletic. One issue with Psephenidae, and with many other insect groups, is the lack of the molecular phylogenetic analyses to test morphology hypothesizes.

After successfully sequencing these two genes from species representing nearly all of the known genera, the data were analyzed using both Bayesian and parsimony methods. Analyses …