Coevolution in a five-way interactions : Does intimate interactions in an ant-plant system promoted their own iversification?

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In the Southeast Asian tropics, specific Iycaenid butterflies (Arhopala) and gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) parasitize Macaranga ant-plants inhabited by mutualistic ants tending scale insects. To determine when the lycaenids and the gall midges first parasitized the Macaranga tripartite symbiosis, we constructed a molecular phylogeny of the both parasites and estimated their divergence times. The minimum age of the lycaenids and that of the gall midges were estimated to be 2.05 Myr and 10.6 Myr, respectively. These results suggest that the lycaenids associated with the pre-existing plant-ant-scale insect symbiosis, while the gall midges have associated with Macaranga plants before the tripartite symbiosis was formed.