Steven Cooper

Thanks for the excellent summary and explanation of our diving beetle paper. All the best for 2021 and hopefully the demise of covid19 in the near future. Steve

Hi Markus, Thanks for the really nice summary of the dytiscid beetle story. I am hoping to have a few beers with you next year at the ICSB conference, if we can all become vaccinated!

That's a great idea, Markus- we need to find a nice way of calibrating the neutral mutation rate of gene degeneration, or even it's relative rate compared to other markers like COI, then we could make some nice estimates on timing the onset of cave colonisation. Are there any genes that are potentially showing degeneration in P. hirtus? Steve

Really interesting result, Marcus, for the age of the lineage, but could its nearest surface relative have gone extinct (e.g. that is likely the case for many of our subterranean dytiscid species)? Extinction of lineages is often a confounding factor in biogeographical studies, particularly in regions that have gone through glaciations or in Australia's case - severe aridity. cheers, Steve