Assistant Professor University of Maryland College Park, Maryland
The South American oil bee genus Chalepogenus (Apidae, Tapinotaspidini) is an emerging evolutionary model for understanding the effects of the biotic and abiotic environment on the evolution of South American species. However, its evolutionary relationships and patterns are still poorly understood. In this work, using a virtually complete sampling of the genus, we build an UCE dataset and combine it with climatic, biogeographic and host-plant data. We show that the genus is polyphyletic, and discuss main evolutionary trends in the group.
