A phylogenetic analysis of Acentropinae (Lepidoptera: Pyraloidea: Crambidae)

Pyraloidea are a megadiverse superfamily of micromoths comprised of two families, Pyralidae and Crambidae. Crambidae make up almost 70% of the diversity in this superfamily with approximately 11,000 species out of the 16,000 described in Pyraloidea. Even with the large number of described species, many of the groups remain understudied, including Acentropinae. Acentropines are a subfamily of crambids that have at least one life stage that lives in the water. These aquatic moths have a large range in biology with various feeding habits and methods of respiration that include filamentous gills and the use of plastrons. Acentropines are the largest group of aquatic moths made up of approximately 70 genera and 700 species. However, there have not been many studies published to understand the phylogenetic relationships of this subfamily. There are currently two papers that hypothesize some relationships; however, these are based on morphological traits and behavior. These papers though, are approximately 70 and 40 years old, and no recent studies have attempted to recreate these with more modern techniques. We sought to test these hypotheses by reconstructing a genus-level phylogeny of Acentropinae, by sequencing approximately 30 species of acentropines alongside 17 other crambids, using target-capture genomic data. Our results support the tribes proposed in the 70-year-old phylogeny, as well as other previously hypothesized relationships.