Molecular phylogeny of the tribe Acanthocinini (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

The tribe Acanthocinini in the family Cerambycidae (Order Coleoptera) has many cryptic-colored species. The majority of these insects that are found in Indiana are dead wood feeders, serving the important function of recycling nutrients in forest ecosystems. We have caught about 20 species belonging to this tribe in Indiana. For each of these species, we obtained DNA sequence data for parts of two mitochondrial genes, cytochrome oxidase 1 and 12S rDNA: and sequence data for the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) of the nuclear ribosomal DNA. We used these molecular sequence data from our Indiana specimens to construct a molecular phylogeny for these 20 species.