Meeting Abstract
The order Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) is the second-most speciose order of animals, and in recent years, tremendous progress has been made in resolving the relationships within and between superfamilies in this order. However, relationships among the most early-diverging families of moths remain unclear; molecular phylogenies are plagued by low support values, and homologies between key morphological characters such as wing veins are still not understood. Moths have an infamously depauperate fossil record, complicating matters further. In 2015, a 3-branched Subcostal vein was predicted to be the primitive character state for all moths; at the time, only 1- and 2-branched Subcostal veins were known from described moths, extant and extinct. A 3-branched Subcostal vein was subsequently found in the genus Agathiphaga, confirming the previous prediction and suggesting that this genus may be the most early-diverging lineage of extant moths. The wing veins of Agathiphaga show unprecedented polymorphism within a single population: the 3-branched Sc vein is present only in some specimens, and variation also exists in the number of Medial and Cubitus veins. This finding raises questions regarding not only early divergences in the moth tree of life, but also regarding the utility of commonly-used skeletal characters in reconstructing primitive body plans and phylogeny, and the use of extant taxa to reconstruct ancestral states for lineages with depauperate fossil records.
