Resin-enabled maternal care is an old evolutionary strategy in New World resin bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae)

Abstract

New World resin bugs (Harpactorinae: Apiomerini) in the genus Apiomerus Hahn, 1831 use plant resins for enhanced prey capture and store resins for maternal care behaviours. The evolutionary history of maternal care strategies across the tribe Apiomerini is unknown because of the lack of a comprehensive phylogeny as well as a lack behavioural data for critical taxa. We here present the first combined morphological and molecular phylogenetic analysis of New World resin bugs that includes representatives of all 13 fossil and extant genera, 112 morphological characters, and 2942 bp of molecular data. Given the lack of direct natural history observations for certain taxa, morphological characters are used as proxies to infer resin-storing and egg-coating maternal behaviours. Phylogenetic hypotheses derived from the combined analyses support three suprageneric clades (Apiomerus, Heniartes, and Manicocoris groups), provide diagnostic features, and place the Dominican amber fossil Apicrenus fossilis Maldonado Capriles, Santiago-Blay & Poinar, 1993 within the Manicocoris clade. Ancestral state reconstruction of characters involved in resin storing and egg coating indicates that this maternal care strategy is not restricted to Apiomerus. Instead, these behaviours are likely to have evolved at the base of the Apiomerus + Manicocoris clade, representing an ancient case of maternal care in this group of insects that originated in the Palaeogene.