The good, the brown, and the ugly: comparative historical biogeography of nocturnal wasps (Hymenoptera: Chyphotidae, Mutillidae, Tiphiidae)

Nocturnal wasps in the family’s Chyphotidae, Mutillidae, and Tiphiidae (Hymenoptera) are endemic to the New World, with the majority of species occurring in the southwestern United States. These wasps are widespread across the western states and are ideal for studying biogeographic hypotheses. Using all three families we take a comparative approach to investigate what past geological events shaped their current distributions and impacted their phylogeographic patterns seen today. Bayesian analysis of mitochondrial data and nuclear data were completed to first generate a phylogeny for each group examined. Dates of major speciation events were generated using the program BEAST and finally ancestral states were reconstructed using the program RASP. Shared dates of divergence were compared to major historical events, both climate and geological. The resulting patterns and events impacting population evolution were compared across all three families.