Beetle in the hay: investigating the molecular phylogeny and geometric morphometrics of the genus Pedinus (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) in Greece

The genus Pedinus Latreille, 1796, a member of the tribe Pedinini in the family Tenebrionidae, has not yet been studied thoroughly. The latest taxonomic revision recognizes three subgenera: Pedinus, Blindus Mulsant & Rey, 1853, and Colpotus Mulsant & Rey, 1853. The subgenera Pedinus and Colpotus are distributed in Greece. This study is the first attempt to address the phylogeny of Pedinus in the Greek area. We conduct molecular phylogenetic and geometric morphometric analyses on seven morphologically delimited species of the subgenus Pedinus, native in Greece. Sequence data from the mitochondrial genes cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and 16S ribosomal DNA and the nuclear gene muscle protein 20 (Mp20) are used. The main areas of study are mainland Greece and Crete and some of its surrounding satellite islands. The reconstructed phylogeny untangles the evolutionary relationships of the lineages under study and proposes a scenario regarding the time frame of their differentiation. The geometric morphometric analyses reveal that the variation in shape of Pedinus specimens is related to their phylogeny, indicating that body shape is probably an effective species-specific discriminating character, at least for some of the studied taxa. None of the approaches implemented validates the subspecies of Pedinus affinis Brullé, 1832.