Systematics and Biogeography of the Family Cicadidae Worldwide: Subsampling the Tree of Life

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The NSF Tree of Life project has made substantial contributions to establishing the major branches of the tree of life dating back hundreds of millions of years; this project will focus on the most recent branches. The major goal of the current proposal is to reconstruct and interpret the evolution of the family Cicadidae worldwide as a model for the origin and transcontinental spread of insect biodiversity over the last 65 million years. Most of the plants and animals populating the earth today arose during this era. Genetic data will be used to test five hypotheses concerning the timing and diversification of this remarkable group of more than 3000 insect species. To accomplish this new molecular and analytical tools for genealogical tree building, biogeography and speciation/extinction studies will be incorporated. Fossil and geological calibrations will be applied to groups that no one has previously attempted to date. Cicadas have natural advantages because they are distributed worldwide and their natural history creates strong genetic/geographic patterns. In the course of our research a new generation of systematists will be trained and trees, maps, keys, photographs, and databases will be created and made available through the worldwide web. A strong international team of researchers and collaborators with complementary expertise in natural history, acoustic analyses, morphological taxonomy, and molecular systematics as well as detailed knowledge of local biogeographic regions has been assembled. The phylogenies produced will help systematists to group undescribed species and genera for which morphological characters are elusive or contradictory. New biodiversity is guaranteed to be discovered. Higher-level taxonomy that has been confused for more than 100 years will be re-evaluated in light of new molecular and morphological data.