Eur. J. Entomol. 123: 291-300, 2026 | DOI: 10.14411/eje.2026.029

Mitogenomic evidence reveals convergent evolution of minute eyeless soil-dwelling weevils in Mesoamerica and the Mediterranean (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)Original article

Manuel A. BARRIOS-IZÁS ORCID...1, Juan J. MORRONE ORCID...2, Vasily V. GREBENNIKOV ORCID...3, Carmelo ANDÚJAR ORCID...4
1 Laboratorio de Bioinformática y Redes Complejas, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados, Unidad Irapuato, Libramiento Norte Carretera Irapuato León, km 9.6, Carr. Panamericana Irapuato León, 36821 Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico; e-mail: manuelbarriosgt@gmail.com
2 Museo de Zoología "Alfonso L. Herrera", Departamento de Biología Evolutiva, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), 04510 Mexico City, Mexico; e-mail: morrone@ciencias.unam.mx
3 Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0C6, Canada; e-mail: vasily.grebennikov@inspection.gc.ca
4 Island Ecology and Evolution Research Group, Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología (IPNA-CSIC), 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain; e-mail: candujar@ipna.csic.es

We describe and illustrate two new species of minute, eyeless, soil-dwelling weevils, each representing a new monotypic genus: Kisin akabali Barrios-Izás & Morrone, gen. et sp. n., from Guatemala, and Xadarhinus dofoi Barrios-Izás & Morrone, gen. et sp. n., from Mexico. Mitogenomic phylogenetic analyses recover these genera, together with the similarly eyeless Yagder serratus from Mexico and two additional undescribed Mexican specimens, as a deeply divergent lineage outside the clade of the "higher" Curculionidae. Despite their striking morphological resemblance to the minute, flightless, and eyeless Mediterranean Raymondionyminae, this newly recognized Mesoamerican lineage is phylogenetically distant from them, representing a remarkable example of convergent evolution. No available family-group name can be confidently assigned to this lineage. Pending a more comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of Curculionoidea, we therefore treat it as Curculionidae incertae sedis.

Keywords: Mitogenomics, Guatemala, Mexico, Raymondionyminae, new genera, new species

Received: May 18, 2026; Revised: October 2, 2026; Accepted: October 2, 2026; Published online: November 10, 2026  Show citation

ACS AIP APA ASA Harvard Chicago Chicago Notes IEEE ISO690 MLA NLM Turabian Vancouver
BARRIOS-IZÁS, M.A., MORRONE, J.J., GREBENNIKOV, V.V., & ANDÚJAR, C. (2026). Mitogenomic evidence reveals convergent evolution of minute eyeless soil-dwelling weevils in Mesoamerica and the Mediterranean (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). EJE, 123, Article 291-300. https://doi.org/10.14411/eje.2026.029
Share...
Download citation
  • BibTeX (.bib)
  • Bookends (.ris)
  • EasyBib (.ris)
  • EndNote (.enw)
  • EndNote 8 (.xml)
  • ISI WoS (.isi)
  • Medlars (.medlars)
  • Mendeley (.ris)
  • MODS (.xml)
  • Papers (.ris)
  • RefWorks (.txt)
  • RefManager (.ris)
  • RIS (.ris)
  • MS Word (.xml)
  • Zotero (.ris)
    • Open full article

    Attachments

    Download fileS1.pdf

    File size: 5.83 MB

    References

    1. Alonso-Zarazaga M.A. 2007: On terminology in Curculionoidea (Coleoptera). - Bol. Soc. Entomól. Aragon. 40: 210.
    2. Altschul S.F., Gish W., Miller W., Myers E.W. & Lipman D.J. 1990: Basic local alignment search tool. - J. Mol. Biol. 215: 403-410. Go to original source...
    3. Andújar C., Arribas P., Ruzicka F., Crampton-Platt A., Timmermans M.J.T.N. & Vogler A. 2015: Phylogenetic community ecology of soil biodiversity using mitochondrial metagenomics. - Mol. Ecol. 24: 3603-3617. Go to original source...
    4. Andújar C., Hlaváč P. & Grebennikov V.V. 2024: Mitochondrial phylogenomics reveals the sister relationship between the endogean Mediterranean raymondionymine weevils and the remaining 51,000+ Curculionidae (Coleoptera). - Arthr. Syst. Phylog. 82: 607-620. Go to original source...
    5. Bernt M., Donath A., Jühling F., Externbrink F., Florentz C., Fritzsch G., Pütz J., Middendorf M. & Stadler P.F. 2013: MITOS: Improved de novo metazoan mitochondrial genome annotation. - Mol. Phylog. Evol. 69: 313-319. Go to original source...
    6. Boisvert S., Raymond F., Godzaridis É., Laviolette F. & Corbeil J. 2012: Ray Meta: Scalable de novo metagenome assembly and profiling. - Genome Biol. 13: R122, 13 pp. Go to original source...
    7. Bolger A.M., Lohse M. & Usadel B. 2014: Trimmomatic: A flexible trimmer for Illumina sequence data. - Bioinformatics 30: 2114-2120. Go to original source...
    8. Crampton-Platt A., Timmermans M.J.T.N., Gimmel M.L., Kutty S.N., Cockerill T.D., Vun Khen C. & Vogler A.P. 2015: Soup to tree: the phylogeny of beetles inferred by mitochondrial metagenomics of a Bornean rainforest sample. - Mol. Biol. Evol. 32: 2302-2316. Go to original source...
    9. Dettai A., Gallut C., Brouillet S., Pothier J., Lecointre G. & Debruyne R. 2012: Conveniently pre-tagged and pre-packaged: extended molecular identification and metagenomics using complete metazoan mitochondrial genomes. - PLoS ONE 7: e51263, 16 pp. Go to original source...
    10. Felsenstein J. 1985: Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the bootstrap. - Evolution 39: 783-791. Go to original source...
    11. Folmer O., Black M., Hoeh W., Lutz R. & Vrijenhoek R. 1994: DNA primers for amplification of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from diverse metazoan invertebrates. - Mol. Marine Biol. Biotechnol. 3: 294-299.
    12. Grebennikov V.V. 2010: First Alaocybites weevil (Insecta: Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) from the Eastern Palaearctic: a new microphthalmic species and generic relationships. - Arthr. Syst. Phylog. 68: 331-365. Go to original source...
    13. Grebennikov V.V. & Anderson R.S. 2021: Yagder serratus, a new eyeless weevil from Mexico and the non-monophyly of Brachycerinae, the evolutionary twilight zone of true weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). - Acta Entomol. Mus. Natn. Pragae 61: 363-374. Go to original source...
    14. Grebennikov V.V. & Anderson R.S. 2022: Phylogeny, diversity and biogeography of flightless amphi-Pacific lymantine weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Molytinae). - Acta Entomol. Musei Natn. Pragae 62: 411-442. Go to original source...
    15. Hebert P.D.N., Ratnasingham S. & de Waard J.R. 2003: Barcoding animal life: cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 divergences among closely related species. - Proc. R. Soc. (B) 270: 96-99. Go to original source...
    16. Huchon D. & Douzery E.J.P. 2001: From the Old World to the New World: A molecular chronicle of the phylogeny and biogeography of hystricognath rodents. - Mol. Phylog. Evol. 20: 238-251. Go to original source...
    17. Katoh K., Misawa K., Kuma K.I. & Miyata T. 2002: MAFFT: a novel method for rapid multiple sequence alignment based on fast Fourier transform. - Nucl. Acids Res. 30: 3059-3066. Go to original source...
    18. Lartillot N. & Philippe H. 2004: A Bayesian mixture model for across-site heterogeneities in the amino-acid replacement process. - Mol. Biol. Evol. 21: 1095-1109. Go to original source...
    19. Li Y.D., Engel M.S., Tihelka E. & Cai C. 2023: Phylogenomics of weevils revisited: data curation and modelling compositional heterogeneity. - Biol. Lett. 19: 20230307, 8 pp. Go to original source...
    20. Lyal C.H.C. (ed.) 2024: Glossary of Weevil Characters. Weevil Workers Website. URL: https://www.curculionoidea.org/glossary (last accessed 29 Jul. 2026).
    21. Marvaldi A.E., Sequeira A.S., O'Brien C.W. & Farrell B.D. 2002: Molecular and morphological phylogenetics of weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea): Do niche shifts accompany diversification? - Syst. Biol. 51: 761-785. Go to original source...
    22. Miralles A., Marin J., Markus D., Herrel A., Hedges S.B. & Vidal N. 2018: Molecular evidence for the paraphyly of Scolecophidia and its evolutionary implications. - J. Evol.Biol. 31: 1782-1793. Go to original source...
    23. Oberprieler R.G. 2014: Brachycerinae Billberg, 1820. In Leschen R.A.B. & Beutel R.G. (eds): Coleoptera, Beetles. Vol. 3: Morphology And Systematics (Phytophaga). Handbook Of Zoology: Arthropoda: Insecta. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, pp. 424-451. Go to original source...
    24. Oberprieler R.G., Marvaldi A.E. & Anderson R.S. 2007: Weevils, weevils, weevils everywhere. - Zootaxa 1668: 491-520. Go to original source...
    25. Peng Y., Leung H.C.M., Yiu S.M. & Chin F.Y.L. 2012: IDBA-UD: a de novo assembler for single-cell and metagenomic sequencing data with highly uneven depth. - Bioinformatics 28: 1420-1428. Go to original source...
    26. Prjibelski A., Antipov D., Meleshko D., Lapidus A. & Korobeynikov A. 2020: Using SPAdes de novo assembler. - Curr. Protoc. Bioinform. 70: e102, 29 pp. Go to original source...
    27. Rambaut A. 2012: FigTree v.1.4.2. URL: http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree
    28. Ratnasingham S. & Hebert P.D.N. 2007: BOLD: The barcode of life data system (http://www.barcodinglife.org). - Mol. Ecol. Notes 7: 355-364. Go to original source...
    29. Seibold I. & Helbig A.J. 1995: Evolutionary history of New and Old World vultures inferred from nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. - Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. (B) 350: 163-178. Go to original source...
    30. Shin S., Clarke D.J., Lemmon A.R., Lemmon E.M., Aitken A.L., Haddad S., Farrell B.D., Marvaldi A.E., Oberprieler R.G. & McKenna D.D. 2018: Phylogenomic data yield new and robust insights into the phylogeny and evolution of weevils. - Mol. Biol. Evol. 35: 823-836. Go to original source...
    31. Stamatakis A. 2014: RAxML version 8: A tool for phylogenetic analysis and post-analysis of large phylogenies. - Bioinformatics 30: 1312-1313. Go to original source...
    32. Yu D.W., Ji Y., Emerson B.C., Wang X., Ye C., Yang C. & Ding Z. 2012: Biodiversity soup: metabarcoding of arthropods for rapid biodiversity assessment and biomonitoring. - Meth. Ecol. Evol. 3: 613-623. Go to original source...

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


    Return to the content