Phylogenomics redefines the evolutionary history of mosquitoes
- Mac P. Pierce
- Brian M. Worthington
- Shaolin Han
- Xue-Bing Ni
- Yunshi Liao
- Marcus H. Shum
- Yi Guan
- Edward C. Holmes
- Tommy T. Lam
2025-10-06
Mosquitoes have a substantial impact on human and animal health, but their deeper evolutionary relationships have been difficult to resolve. We inferred a time-calibrated phylogenetic history of mosquitoes using conserved genome-wide markers from representatives of major lineages. Our analyses revealed that codon bias and positive selection in subfamily Anophelinae contributed to a substantial level of branch attraction bias between Anophelinae and outgroup taxa, which in our view has misled previous phylogenetic analyses of mosquitoes. Accounting for this systematic phylogenetic bias led to a revised view of mosquito evolution, including the nonmonophyly of subfamily Culicinae. Similarly, we dated the origin of mosquitoes to the mid-Cretaceous (~106 Mya) and most extant genera to after the KPg boundary <66 Mya, 100 My younger than previous estimates and coincident with the origin of Plasmodium parasites. Our study provides a foundation for future analyses of the evolution of mosquito-borne disease.