Convergent evolution of Old and New world Oedipodinae grasshoppers

Rapidly diverging clades are evolutionary laboratories to study speciation and its underling forces. Many of the most important findings and ideas in evolutionary biology have been developed studying rapidly diversifying lineages, e.g. Darwin finches, East African cichlids. Such lineages provide optimal conditions to study the different stages of evolution. Many of these systems occur at a very limited geographic scale where ecological opportunity has allowed the formation of new species in short amounts of time. Fewer studies have addressed superficially non-adaptive radiations taking place at larger geographic scales. One such radiation are the band-winged grasshoppers (Oedipodinae) with more than 800 species and an almost global distribution. Two hotspots of their distribution are the Northern US and the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Interestingly, similar phenotypes occur in both regions, which apparently have evolved independently. Yet, no robust phylogeny of the group is currently available making any inference on trait evolution hypothetical. Hence, in this project we generate the first robust phylogeny for the group using genomic data and biometrically quantify phenotypes across most genera of the group to establish the Oedipodinae as a novel model system to study evolution of similar phenotypes at large geographic scales.

Böll Stiftung, DGFO, Orthopterists Society, Universität Hamburg

Projektverantwortliche: Lara-Sophie Dey, Martin Husemann