The insect order Mantophasmatodea was recently described based on a series of distinctive morphological and behavioral characters. Klass et al. (2002) suggest that these characters are sufficiently unique to make mantophasmids deserving of ordinal status. However, no formal phylogenetic analysis was undertaken, and it is still unclear whether Mantophasmatodea is sister group to a single order, sister group to a clade of orders, or nested within an already described insect order. Multiple genes were sequenced for exemplars of Mantophasmatodea, representing all of the currently described extant species of this putative order. Taxa were also densely sampled from throughout the basal neopteran orders. Phylogenetic analyses of these data suggest a robust solution as to whether or not Mantophasmatodea should be considered a legitimate insect order.
Species 1: Mantophasmatodea
Keywords: Polyneoptera, Molecular systematics
Back to Student Competition Ten-Minute Papers, Subsection A2. Systematics, Morphology, and Evolution
Back to Student Competition 10-minute Paper
Back to The 2002 ESA Annual Meeting and Exhibition