On the Origin of the Tingidae (Insecta, Heteroptera)

ABSTRACT The hypothesis of a Gondwanian origin of the family Tingidae (Insecta, Heteroptera) has been promoted and seems to be generally accepted by specialists. However, the area of emergence and diversification of the clade, South American or Australian, is still debated and cannot be solved without integrating Vianaidinae, a subfamily considered as the sister of all the other Tingidae, into phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses. This study aims to propose a molecular phylogeny integrating the three known Tingidae subfamilies for the first time, to date the emergence of the great clades using fossil calibrations and to test the origin of Tingidae. We tested the effect of different a priori parameters and sets of fossil calibrations. The uniform probability distribution gives older ages of the emergence of the main clades than the exponential and lognormal probability distributions. The emergence dates of the main clades differ slightly according to the number of calibrations with the exponential probability distribution, but significantly with the uniform probability distribution. We tested the hypothesis of the Gondwanian origin of Tingidae using DEC and DIVALIKE analysis. Tingidae may originate between the Neotropical and Afrotropical regions and spread out in Eastern and Northern regions mainly by long distance dispersal.