Unveiling the evolutionary history of a puzzling antlion genus Gatzara Navás (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae: Dendroleontinae) based on systematic revision, molecular phylogenetics, and biogeographic inference

The antlion genus Gatzara Navás, 1915 is one of the major lineages of the subfamily Dendroleontinae Banks, 1899 (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae) from Asia, but having chaotic background of systematics. Here we present a comprehensive systematic revision and mitochondrial phylogenomic analysis to clarify the identity and to unravel the evolutionary history of this genus. Combining morphological and molecular evidence, we separate the species of Gatzara into two clades, and most of these species are transferred to the genus Nepsalus Navás, 1912 herein restored. The dated phylogeny with ancestral area reconstruction indicates that the common ancestor of Gatzara and Nepsalus might have been widely distributed in East Asia and these two genera might have diverged during the late Miocene. The speciation of most Nepsalus species that are allopatric in distribution might have been driven by a series of vicarience events related to the rise of the Himalayas and the formation of the major islands of East Asia during the late Miocene and Pliocene. A new species, namely N. chikuni sp. n., is described from Tibet. New taxonomic changes include the six new combinations: N. caelestis (Krivokhatsky, 1997) comb. n., N. decorillus (Yang, 1997) comb. n., N. decorosus (Yang, 1988) comb. n., N. indicus (Navás, 1914) comb. n., N. insolitus (Walker, 1860) comb. n., N. jezoensis (Okamoto, 1910) comb. n., and N. petrophilus (Miller & Stange, 1999) comb. n.