Integration of Phylogenomic and Fossil Evidence Reveals the Evolution of Polyneoptera

Insects constitute more than half of all documented animal species, and the only group of flying invertebrates. Polyneoptera

represents one of the major lineages of winged insects with unsolved evolutionary history, and the first lineage of winged insects that

underwent an evolutionary radiation. Open questions in Polyneoptera evolution include their phylogenetic relationships, patterns of

wing evolution (origin and secondary loss of flying abilities), and how the origin of fly relate with patterns of polyneopteran

diversification and species richness. These issues have profound implications for our understanding of the early evolution of winged insects more broadly.

This project will use, for the first time, a combined morphological and phylogenomic approach, and integrate new fossils and living

taxa to achieve a holistic understanding of polyneopteran evolution. We will explicitly focus on two orders that are particularly poorly

understood: Plecoptera and Grylloblattodea, to clarifying the relationship close to the root of the polyneopteran tree, particularly the

relationships of the Zoraptera, Dermaptera and Plecoptera. We will infer a new evolutionary timescale of Polyneoptera using new

fossil calibrations defined using Middle Jurassic fossils from the Daohugou locality I already sampled, and that I will describe as part of

this project. Subsequently, using new fossils and existing data I will compile a morphological dataset, and using publicly available

data a new phylogenomic dataset. I will resolve the phylogeny of Polyneoptera, date it and use the new morphological matrix to

understand patterns of morphological evolution in this lineage. Finally, I will perform diversification analyses to discriminate how

extrinsic (e.g. climate and environmental changes) and intrinsic (e.g. origin of wings) factors shaped polyneopteran evolution and contributed to their current biodiversity.