Phylogenomics and Fossilized Birth-Death Dating Reveals Gondawanan Origin and Extensive Post-Cretaceous Diversification of Worldwide Cicadidae.

Stukel, M.; Matzke, N. J.; Douglas, J.; Ruschel, T. P.; Puissant, S.; Price, B. W.; Villet, M.; Lemmon, A. R.; Lemmon, E.; Simon, C.

doi:10.1101/2025.11.08.687401

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.11.08.687401

Phylogenomics and Fossilized Birth-Death Dating Reveals Gondawanan Origin and Extensive Post-Cretaceous Diversification of Worldwide Cicadidae.

Stukel, M.·Matzke, N. J.·Douglas, J.·Ruschel, T. P.·Puissant, S.·Price, B. W.·Villet, M.·Lemmon, A. R.·Lemmon, E.·Simon, C.

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Abstract

The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction resulted in a massive turnover in biodiversity. The oldest fossils of the globally-distributed insect family Cicadidae date to the Paleocene, suggesting that this family diversified after the K-Pg boundary. We analyzed 490 nuclear Anchored Hybrid Enrichment loci as well as mitochondrial genomes for the Cicadidae, sampling all five subfamilies and 82% of tribes, using concatenated maximum-likelihood and multi-species coalescent approaches to resolve the phylogenetic relationships of Cicadidae subfamilies. We estimated divergence times of Cicadidae lineages using a fossilized birth-death model augmented into the multispecies coalescent with 44 fossil taxa. We estimated a Cretaceous origin for Cicadidae with four of the five subfamilies diversifying shortly after the K-Pg extinction event. Our fossilized birth-death tip-dating approach improved the precision of age estimates for many cicada clades compared to dates based on node-calibration from previous studies. Our results augment insight into how the K-Pg mass extinction shaped present-day diversity.

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Stukel, M., Matzke, N. J., Douglas, J., Ruschel, T. P., Puissant, S., Price, B. W., Villet, M., Lemmon, A. R., Lemmon, E., Simon, C.. 2025-11-10. Phylogenomics and Fossilized Birth-Death Dating Reveals Gondawanan Origin and Extensive Post-Cretaceous Diversification of Worldwide Cicadidae.. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.08.687401

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