[Taxacom] Timing of the Lepidoptera-Trichoptera split (and their split from Antliophora, i.e. flies and scorpionflies)

[Kenneth Kinman]

Hi All,
      I am hoping that Grehan's nitpicking review of Kawahara et al. (2019) won't dissuade anyone from reading this excellent paper.  Their data and analysis are pretty convincing that the origins of Lepidoptera extend back "into" the Late Carboniferous (or "by" the Late Carboniferous", if you want to avoid Grehan's nitpicking).
      Their conclusion fits in very well with the Permian fossils of sister group Trichoptera, perhaps extending back into the early Permian if the larval cases found in Brazil are indeed trichopteran larval cases.  And the sister group to clade Lepidoptera-Trichoptera, namely clade Antliophora, is also known from the Permian (the scorpionfly Family Nannochoristidae).
      It makes sense that these clades split apart "in" the Late Carboniferous (again, you can substitute "by" instead of "in" to avoid getting nitpicked).   The same could well be true of the split of Coleopterida from Neuropterida, and the origin of Hymenoptera could also extend back into the Permian or even Late Carboniferous.   All of these insects Orders form Superorder Holometabola (endopterygotans), and their common ancestor could be very closely related to members of Order Miomoptera (of the Late Carboniferous and Permian).
       So if you are searching for the earliest members of any of these insect Orders, then Late Carboniferous ("Pennsylvanian") rocks probably would be the best place to look.   Early Carboniferous would probably be rather "iffy", so I regard the nitpicking about Kawahara et al., especially phrases like "junk science" and "magical creation", as unnecessarily harsh and detracting from their scientific contribution.
                                              ----------------Ken Kinman

Kawahara et al 2019. Phylogenomics reveals the evolutionary timing and pattern of butterflies and moths:   https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1907847116

2016 paper about Early Permian larval cases (trichopterans?):  https://www.nature.com/articles/srep19215

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