Estimating ancestral geographical distributions: a Gondwanan origin for aphid parasitoids?

Abstract

We tested the published hypothesis of a Gondwanan origin for the overwhelmingly northern hemisphere aphid parasitoids (Aphidiinae) as follows: (i) finding their sister group by a phylogenetic analysis of the entire Braconidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) using sequence data from approximately 500 bp fragments of both the nuclear 28S (D2 region) and mitochondrial 16S rDNA genes, (ii) using this sister–group relationship and the more informative 28S D2 gene to estimate the phylogeny of the Aphidiinae and (iii) estimating the ancestral distribution for the Aphidiinae using maximum–likelihood and maximum–parsimony methods. Both methods indicated a Gondwanan origin.