Up high and down low: phylogeny and zoogeography of the exclusively Nearctic ground beetle genus Rhadine LeConte (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Platynini)

Members of the genus Rhadine LeConte are long-legged, slender, and flightless ground beetles and are unusual among the vast majority of Carabidae in that they occur on mountaintops and, seemingly contrary to this, in mammal burrows, mine shafts, and caves.  The genus contains approximately 60 names distributed in six informal species groups and is in need of revision.  Very little taxonomic work has been conducted on this genus with the exception of the troglobitic species currently classified within the Rhadine subterranea-group from caves in Texas and Mexico.  Phylogenetic relationships among the members of the genus were inferred based on one mitochondrial gene (cytochrome c oxidase I) and two nuclear loci (28S rRNA and CAD).  Twenty species of Rhadine, many of which were sampled from more than one voucher, are included in the analyses representing both terrestrial and cavernicolous species and all species groups.  Outgroup taxa include members of the hypothesized sister group of Rhadine, Tanystoma Motschulsky that contains species exhibiting some degree of brachyptery, and other North American platynine genera.  Inference methods include both parsimony and Bayesian analyses of the concatenated data.  The resulting phylogeny is used to test the monophyly of the genus, the six species groups, and explore the evolutionary history of ecological transitions within the genus.