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Updated: Sep 15, 2026

A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles
Published on: July 11, 2025
Molecular phylogenetics provides insights into biogeography and character evolution in the assassin bug tribe Saicini
Zhuo Chen1, Yunfei Wu2, Tianyou Zhao1
1State Key Laboratory of Agricultural and Forestry Biosecurity, MARA Key Lab of Pest Monitoring and Green Management, College of Plant Protection, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
Reduviidae (assassin bugs) are a species-rich group of terrestrial predatory insects, exhibiting remarkable diversity in foreleg morphology. The tribe Saicini (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Emesinae) displays various morphological modifications of the foreleg. Although the definition and classification of Saicini have undergone considerable changes in recent years, the higher-level phylogeny and evolutionary history of the tribe remain poorly understood. Here, we generated a molecular dataset for Saicini to investigate its phylogeny, historical biogeography and foreleg character evolution. Our phylogenetic results corroborate the monophyly of Saicini and its two subtribes, Saicina and Tagalina, and reveal two new genera: Montopolytoxus gen. n. and Webbisaica gen. n. Molecular dating and biogeographic analyses suggest that the crown group of Saicini originated in the Late Cretaceous (ca. 72.05 Ma), followed by multiple transcontinental dispersal events that shaped the current tropicopolitan distribution of the tribe. Ancestral state reconstruction of six foreleg characters indicates that the ancestral Saicini possessed a moderately elongate procoxa, a curved protibia and a short protarsomere I. The presence of tuberculate setae on the foreleg is inferred to be the ancestral condition for Tagalina.
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