Phylogenetic Relationships of Japanese Auritibicen Species (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cryptotympanini) Inferred from Mitochondrial and Nuclear Gene Sequences.

We investigated the phylogenetic relationships and divergence times within the genus Auritibicen(Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Cryptotympanini), analyzing five Japanese species (A. japonicus, A. bihamatus,A. kyushyuensis, A. esakii and A. flammatus) and three species from East Asian mainland and Taiwan (A. atrofasciatus, A. intermedius and A. chujoi) using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and nuclear elongation factor 1-alpha (EF-1a) gene sequences. Although the EF-1a gene tree did not resolve the relationships among these Auritibicen species, the trees based on COI gene and the combined data set showed that Japanese taxa comprised three distinct lineages: the individual species A. flammatus and A. bihamatus, and the A. japonicus group, comprising A. japonicus, A. esakii and A. kyushyuensis from Japan and A. intermedius from Korea. In A. kyushyuensis, which comprises three populations in Kyushu, western Honshu and Shikoku, the specimens from western Honshu and Shikoku were closely related to each other, but not to the specimen from Kyushu; instead, they were sister to the Korean A. intermedius. The incongruence between the gene tree and species tree necessitates further population genetic and morphological studies to confirm the classification and species status of the western Honshu and Shikoku populations of A. kyushyuensis, which were originally described as two independent species. Divergence time estimation suggested that the most recent common ancestor of Auritibicen species studied dated back to the late Pliocene and that the species of the A. japonicus group diverged during the mid Pleistocene. Thus, the Pleistocene climatic fluctuation may have promoted the divergence of the Auritibicen species.