Duane D. McKenna

TL;DR: The phylogeny of all major insect lineages reveals how and when insects diversified and provides a comprehensive reliable scaffold for future comparative analyses of evolutionary innovations among insects.

TL;DR: A phylogeny of beetles based on DNA sequence data from eight nuclear genes, including six single‐copy nuclear protein‐coding genes, for 367 species representing 172 of 183 extant families provides a uniquely well‐resolved temporal and phylogenetic framework for studying patterns of innovation and diversification in Coleoptera.

TL;DR: Beetles diversity appears to have resulted from multiple factors, including low extinction rates over a long evolutionary history, codiversification with angiosperms, and adaptive radiations of specialized herbivorous beetles following convergent horizontal transfers of microbial genes encoding PCWDEs.

TL;DR: A large-scale molecular phylogeny for weevils (herbivorous beetles in the superfamily Curculionoidea), one of the most diverse lineages of insects, is presented, based on ≈8 kilobases of DNA sequence data from a worldwide sample including all families and subfamilies, to suggest a deep and complex history of coevolution between weevil and angiosperms.

TL;DR: Amplification and functional divergence of genes associated with specialized feeding on plants, including genes originally obtained via horizontal gene transfer from fungi and bacteria, contributed to the addition, expansion, and enhancement of the metabolic repertoire of the Asian longhorned beetle and to a lesser degree, other phytophagous insects.