D'Olsoufieff, 1924 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) and the position of C. Bellicosus

Abstract

Coprophanaeus (Megaphanaeus) d'Olsoufieff, 1924 has four valid species: C. lancifer (Linné, 1767), C. ensifer (Germar, 1821), C. bonariensis (Gory, 1844) and C. bellicosus (Olivier, 1789). However, authors disagree about the placement of C. bellicosus. Thus, our aims were (I) to test if Megaphanaeus is a monophyletic group and (II) verify to which subgenus C. bellicosus belongs. We sequenced three mitochondrial and one nuclear marker for ten Phanaeini species: COI (672bp), COI-II (1326bp), 16S (527bp) and 28S (994bp). For fifteen species we sequenced two markers, COI (681pb) and 16S (532pb). Both matrices were analyzed under three methods of phylogenetic inference: Maximum Parsimony, Maximum Likelihood, and Bayesian Inference. Megaphanaeus is here considered monophyletic including C. bellicosus as sister-group to (C. bonariensis (C. lancifer + C. ensifer)). All analyses recovered the non-monophyly of both C. lancifer and C. ensifer, because of a population of C. lancifer grouped with C. ensifer specimens.