Phylogeny of Megaloptera: A review of present knowledge

Megaloptera is the second smallest order in the Holometabola. The phylogeny and evolution of Megaloptera is of high interest concerning the origin of aquatic life-style of their larvae, the evolution of remarkable sexually selected traits, and the formation of their modern disjunctive distribution pattern. The present review summarizes the research progress on the phylogeny of Megaloptera. The higher-level phylogeny of Megaloptera appears to be resolved owing to the recent phylogenomic studies based on genome-scale data. The intergeneric and interspecific phylogenies of Megaloptera were analyzed in a number of works mainly based on morphological data. Thus, phylogenetic analysis based on molecular data is essential for testing the previous morphology-based hypotheses in future studies