LINKED: A Phylogenetic Analysis of Butterfly, Moth, Beetles, and Wasp Species in Luzon Island, Philippines and their Morphological Linkage to Androctonus maurentanicus (Scorpion)

In this laboratory activity, the authors selected 5 insect taxa from the roster of insects that they have studied in laboratory activity 2. As per the manual, the proponents obtained five character and character states of their selected taxa. Then, the proponents picked an outgroup species from a closely related class (Arachnida). The character and character states of the chosen taxa including the outgroup species were tabulated. With backing literatures, the ancestry of each character states was determined. Each character states were coded appropriately using binary coding. The group assigned zero (0) to the ancestral or primitive character states and one (1) to the derived or advanced character states. The ingroup was then arranged and assigned as T1-T5 based on the ancestry of their character states relying heavy on the characters of the abdomen as it is where the reproductive part of insects commonly lies. Since the outgroup contains most of the ancestral character states, it was assigned as T0. For phylogenetic analysis, the proponents used two hypotheses (1) tackling the overall connection of the ingroup with each other and (2) the morphological linkage of the outgroup to the ingroup. The authors then constructed at least three dichotomously branching cladograms based on the established character matrix and chose the most parsimonious out of the three. The cladogram revealed that T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 are monophyletic groups sharing a common ancestry. In addition to that, T1, T2, and T5 exhibits homoplasy by having an abdomen length of 7-12 mm. T1, T3, and T4 exhibits homoplasy due to their simple eyes the same with T3, T4, and T5 which are homoplasious to having 1-6 abdominal segments. On the other hand, from the ancestral characters, T0, T3, and T4 exhibits plesiomorphy having 1-6 mm abdomen length. Moreover, T0, T2, and T5 are homoplasious to having compound eyes. T0, T1, and T2 also exhibit homoplasy due to their abdominal segments ranging from 7-11. Lastly, T0 is apomorphic to character states having the absence of wings and antennae.