Comparative phylogeogeography of South African chafers (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) -inferring the evolution of diversity in a biodiversity hotspot.

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The proposed project aims to understand the evolutionary processes underlying the exceptional diversity of herbivore chafer beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) in southern Africa using a combination of phylogenetic, morphological, macroecological and biogeographical data. Based on a comprehensive phylogenetic framework of South African chafers we will search for the drivers of their diversity in an ensemble of factors that supposedly had influence on species and community evolution, such as climate, soil, sexual selection, vegetation cover, and competition between species. This will involve studies on the range evolution and include data of body morphospace and genital morphometry. Multiple specimen samples and tree-based inference of species boundaries will have crucial role in the project, since their ensemble is used to detect directed selection in character traits which will hopefully sheet light on processes during speciation. The tree-based comparative studies are completed by a phenetic comparison of the chafer assemblages in different climatic envelopes and a factor analysis of their composition. By combination of these two approaches we will get deeper insight for drivers of chafer diversification since we will be able to detect ecological and historical factors determining the assemblage composition, where concurrence, selection and evolution take place.