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

在东南亚热带地区，特定的叶蜂科蝴蝶(阿霍帕拉)和斑潜蝇(线虫科)寄生在Macaranga蚂蚁植物上--这种植物由互惠共生的蚂蚁栖息，照看着介壳虫。为了确定狼蚊和胆蚊首次寄生Macaranga三方共生的时间，我们构建了这两种寄生虫的分子系统发育图，并估计了它们的分歧时间。据估计，狼尾类的最小年龄为2.05Myr，胆蚊的最小年龄为10.6Myr。这些结果表明，狼蛛类与预先存在的植物-蚂蚁鳞虫共生有关，而五倍子蚊在形成三方共生之前就已经与Macaranga植物有关。

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.