A global phylogeny of butterflies reveals their evolutionary history, ancestral hosts and biogeographic origins.

Butterflies are a diverse and charismatic insect group that are thought to have evolved with plants and dispersed throughout the world in response to key geological events. However, these hypotheses have not been extensively tested because a comprehensive phylogenetic framework and datasets for butterfly larval hosts and global distributions are lacking. We sequenced 391 genes from nearly 2,300 butterfly species, sampled from 90 countries and 28 specimen collections, to reconstruct a new phylogenomic tree of butterflies representing 92% of all genera.

Ancient Neotropical origin and recent recolonisation: Phylogeny, biogeography and diversification of the Riodinidae (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea).

We present the first dated higher-level phylogenetic and biogeographic analysis of the butterfly family Riodinidae. This family is distributed worldwide, but more than 90% of the c. 1500 species are found in the Neotropics, while the c.

Integration of DNA barcoding into an ongoing inventory of complex tropical biodiversity.

Inventory of the caterpillars, their food plants and parasitoids began in 1978 for today's Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), in northwestern Costa Rica. This complex mosaic of 120 000 ha of conserved and regenerating dry, cloud and rain forest over 0-2000 m elevation contains at least 10 000 species of non-leaf-mining caterpillars used by more than 5000 species of parasitoids. Several hundred thousand specimens of ACG-reared adult Lepidoptera and parasitoids have been intensively and extensively studied morphologically by many taxonomists, including most of the co-authors.

Montane speciation patterns in Ithomiola butterflies (Lepidoptera: Riodinidae): are they consistently moving up in the world?

Tropical lowland areas have often been seen as the centres of terrestrial species proliferation, but recent evidence suggests that young species may be more frequent in montane areas. Several montane speciation modes have been proposed, but their relative frequencies and predominant evolutionary sequence remain unclear because so few biogeographic and phylogenetic studies have tested such questions. I use morphological data to generate a phylogenetic hypothesis for all 11 species of the riodinid butterfly genus Ithomiola (Riodininae: Mesosemiini: Napaeina).

Extinction and biogeography in the Caribbean: new evidence from a fossil riodinid butterfly in Dominican amber.

We describe a new species of extinct riodinid butterfly, Voltinia dramba, from Oligo-Miocene Dominican amber (15-25 Myr ago). This appears to be the first butterfly to be taxonomically described from amber, and the first adult riodinid fossil. The series of five specimens represents probably the best-preserved fossil record for any lepidopteran.

The phylogeography of Amazonia revisited: new evidence from riodinid butterflies.

A fully resolved cladogram for 19 species in the Charis cleonus group of riodinid butterflies, which have closely parapatric ranges throughout the Amazon basin, is used to derive an area cladogram for the region. This represents the first comprehensive species-level analysis using insects and results in a hypothesis of Amazonian area relationships that is the most detailed to date. The Charis area cladogram is interpreted as supporting an historical vicariant split between the Guianas and the remainder of the Amazon and then between the upper and lower Amazon.