PEET - Austral Staphylinidae

Newly-collected samples brought back to the museum are sorted (removing all Coleoptera, non-mite Arachnida, and Myriapoda) and processed by the PEET team and a Field Museum collection assistant. The residues from the bulk samples, containing many additional taxa, are kept in the Field Museum’s collection of 16,000+ bulk samples, and are available for future removal of additional taxa by museum staff or other researchers. All collecting data (including latitude and longitude) and identifications, as made, are entered into a research specimen database developed and maintained by the PIs since 1985. This databasing permits ready use of the accumulated data (along with other data, entered retrospectively) by all participants to generate lists of specimens examined for the monographs or other papers, to map distributions, and to perform GIS analysis with respect to elevation and other environmental parameters.

Adult and larval specimens are studied dry (pinned or pointed; adults only), in alcohol, cleared and disarticulated on permanent or temporary slides, and with the SEM, as needed to see and interpret different characters. Based on the PIs’ prior experience, we expect in the course of these studies to discover many new characters of use for phylogenetic analysis, identification, or both. In addition to morphological data, DNA sequence data are being gathered for at least the trainees’ monograph taxa (and appropriate outgroups) to the extent allowed by available material. Since these analyses are mainly at the interspecific level, the cytochrome oxidase II (COII) and cytochrome oxidase I (COI) mitochondrial genes are likely to be informative genes.

Phylogenetic analyses are being done using at least the programs PAUP*4 and NONA comparing partitioned and combined parsimony analyses of the morphological and molecular data sets and maximum likelihood analyses of the molecular data. MacClade is used to explore character evolution in the context of our phylogenetic analyses.

The “best” method for doing historical biogeographic analysis remains hotly debated, and a wide variety of analytical techniques have been proposed and discussed in the literature. We plan to use a variety of different techniques, as appropriate, in different phases of our analyses. In recognizing the existence of the numerous austral disjunct groups of Staphylinidae mentioned here, we have, in effect, already performed an informal track analysis to identify appropriate groups for comparison. Parsimony analysis of endemicity can be useful for delimiting areas of endemism in a group, and various methods of cladistic biogeography are available for analyzing the relationships among such areas of endemism. In addition to using varied methods, we are also gathering from the literature results of analyses of other austral disjunct taxa for comparison with our results in the search for more general patterns and general explanations where appropriate.

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