Seoul National University Seoul, Seoul-t'ukpyolsi, Republic of Korea
We reconstructed beetle relationships, evolution, and the genomic basis of specialized plant-feeding through analyses of large-scale DNA data. We determined that herbivorous beetles rapidly diversified following the acquisition–via ancient horizontal gene transfers–of microbial genes enabling efficient digestion of plant tissues. Moreover, this happened in parallel in both major lineages of specialized herbivorous beetles—Buprestoidea (metallic wood-boring beetles) and Phytophaga (leaf, longhorn, and weevil beetles). We propose that these genes were key to the apparent evolutionary success of herbivorous beetles ( >135,000 described extant species).
