Kawahara, Akito YStorer, CarolineCarvalho, Ana Paula SPlotkin, David MCondamine, Fabien LBraga, Mariana PEllis, Emily ASt Laurent, Ryan ALi, XuankunBarve, VijayCai, LimingEarl, ChandraFrandsen, Paul BOwens, Hannah LValencia-Montoya, Wendy AAduse-Poku, KwakuToussaint, Emmanuel FADexter, Kelly MDoleck, TenzingMarkee, AmandaMesscher, RebeccahNguyen, Y-LanBadon, Jade Aster TBenítez, Hugo ABraby, Michael FBuenavente, Perry ACChan, Wei-PingCollins, Steve CRabideau Childers, Richard ADankowicz, EvenEastwood, RodFric, Zdenek FGott, Riley JHall, Jason PWHallwachs, WinnieHardy, Nate BSipe, Rachel L HawkinsHeath, AlanHinolan, Jomar DHomziak, Nicholas THsu, Yu-FengInayoshi, YutakaItliong, Micael GAJanzen, Daniel HKitching, IKunte, KrushnameghLamas, GerardoLandis, Michael JLarsen, Elise ALarsen, Torben BLeong, Jing VLukhtanov, VladimirMaier, Crystal AMartinez, Jose IMartins, Dino JMaruyama, KiyoshiMaunsell, Sarah CMega, Nicolás OliveiraMonastyrskii, AlexanderMorais, Ana BBMüller, Chris JNaive, Mark Arcebal KNielsen, GregoryPadrón, Pablo SebastiánPeggie, DjunijantiRomanowski, Helena PiccoliSáfián, SzabolcsSaito, MotokiSchröder, StefanShirey, VaughnSoltis, DougSoltis, PamelaSourakov, AndreiTalavera, GerardVila, RogerVlasanek, PetrWang, HoushuaiWarren, Andrew DWillmott, Keith RYago, MasayaJetz, WalterJarzyna, Marta ABreinholt, Jesse WEspeland, MarianneRies, LeslieGuralnick, Robert PPierce, Naomi ELohman, David J2023-06-192023-06-192023-05-15Kawahara, A.Y., Storer, C., Carvalho, A.P.S. et al. A global phylogeny of butterflies reveals their evolutionary history, ancestral hosts and biogeographic origins. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 903–913 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02041-910.1038/s41559-023-02041-9http://hdl.handle.net/10141/623056Abstract: 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. Our phylogeny has strong support for nearly all nodes and demonstrates that at least 36 butterfly tribes require reclassification. Divergence time analyses imply an origin ~100 million years ago for butterflies and indicate that all but one family were present before the K/Pg extinction event. We aggregated larval host datasets and global distribution records and found that butterflies are likely to have first fed on Fabaceae and originated in what is now the Americas. Soon after the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, butterflies crossed Beringia and diversified in the Palaeotropics. Our results also reveal that most butterfly species are specialists that feed on only one larval host plant family. However, generalist butterflies that consume two or more plant families usually feed on closely related plants.enopenAccesshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Journal Article2397-334XNature Ecology & Evolution2023-05-16entomologyphylogenetics