The structure of the Cardiophorinae-Dendrometrinae clade (Coleoptera: Elateridae) is the weakest point of the current click-beetle phylogenetics and classification

There has been no consensus on the classification of the click beetle subfamilies Dendrometrinae and Hypnoidinae, nor on their relationships with Cardiophorinae and Negastriinae. Incompatible phylogenetic hypotheses have been recovered from morphological, Sanger, AHE, WGS, and transcriptomic data. We use phylogenomic data, present phylogenetic hypotheses based on maximum likelihood and coalescent analyses, and assess the decisiveness of phylogenetic signal. Rapid radiation and incomplete sorting negatively affect topological consistency, and only five clades are robustly supported. Based on our results and in agreement with earlier works, we revise the classification. We redefine Dendrometrinae nov. sens. to include Selatosomini and Dendrometrini; we raise Oxynopterinae stat. nov. et nov. sens. to subfamily rank and add the tribes Dimini, Plastocerini, and Pleonomini, previously placed in Dendrometrinae. We assign subfamily rank to Prosterninae stat. nov. , previously a tribe in Dendrometrinae. Hypnoidinae, Cardiophorinae, and Negastriinae retain their subfamily rank. All taxa are compatible with monophyla recovered in current and earlier 4,000-locus-based analyses and with almost all topologies based on AHE data. Our revision aims to achieve stability. Therefore, the revised classification reflects only robustly supported clades. Long-standing controversies are solved by assigning subfamily rank to two taxa and discarding Dendrometrinae s.l. as an unsupported, possibly non-natural taxon.