Professor Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan
Longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) are species-rich, containing over 35,000 species. While some better-known species are common, many taxa are rare or have small ranges so are difficult to collect. Furthermore, a given genus may range worldwide making comprehensive taxon sampling for evolutionary or taxonomic goals difficult. To address this sampling issue in some ongoing studies, we utilized a PCR-based hybrid enrichment approach to sequence beetles from museum collections. Lower taxonomic levels can be targeted with this method which allows the use of less conserved genes that have phylogenetic information at the species level. The samples ranged from dried types to ethanol preserved recent samples and in age from five to almost 100 years old. The process of non-externally destructive sampling from large specimens, retrieving sufficient DNA, and sequencing with read-processing will be discussed. Up to 14 nuclear genes and mitogenomes were produced from each dried sample. The sequences were used to expand the phylogenies of longhorn genera and tribes to shed light on taxonomic issues, confirm new genera, and test hostplant use shifts.
