Ricerc@Sapienza

Calyptrates are a megadiverse, actively radiating, group of dipterans, which are widely spread and abundant in nearly all terrestrial environments. Despite huge diversity and economic importance, their phylogeny is far from resolved. Recent attempts employing few taxa seem converging in retrieving monophyly for most of the families and subfamilies, but deep relationships among these, especially for those of the oestroid clade (blow flies and relatives), are labile when not changing. The goal of the present project is to shed some light on the deep phylogenetic relationships among Calyptratae by using an anchored hybridization approach with a careful taxon sampling. Furthermore, we aim at resolving the generic phylogeny of two key families of parasitoid flies: Rhinophoridae and Polleniidae.
Rhinophorids are interesting because of their peculiar parasitoid habit: they are the only insects having exploited crustaceans (Crustacea, Isopoda, Oniscidea) as hosts. Moreover, adult rhinophorids are difficult to recognize from other oestroids due to the lack of autapomorphies. Differently, however, the preimaginal instars present sound autapomorphies. Notwithstanding the several phylogenetic investigations conducted so far, the phylogenetic position of the rhinophorids is ambiguous and there is an impelling need of improving both taxon sampling and sequence data in order to gain a better resolution.
In turn, the phylogenetic position of the polleniids as sister group of the Tachinidae is becoming consensus recently, but the phylogenetic relationships within the family are still unknown.
In conclusion we aim to reconstruct a solid phylogeny of these groups in order to build up a stable and predictive classification of the Oestroidea.