Mr Peisong Tian1, Ms Lyn Cook1

1The University of Queensland, Australia

Biography:

Mr Peisong Tian, finished bachelor and honours at the University of Queensland, now enrolling in The Australian National University as a PhD student. With a great passion in entomology, Mr Peisong Tian focuses particularly on insect systematics.

Abstract:

Eucalyptus, the most dominant native tree group in Australia, is host to many genera of insects. In contrast with the eucalypts themselves, most of the diversity of insects feeding on them has not yet been described or, when it has, there is no way of actually identifying specimens to species. Leaf beetles of the genus Trachymela are an example of this. There are 127 named species and about135 synonyms, but the genus has not been revised for more than 100 years, and only four species have been described in the past century. Here, we report the first attempt to provide a taxonomic framework for Trachymela using COI DNA barcodes for 80 specimens. We then assess species diversity among specimens that match the description of T. alticola using DNA sequences from the mitochondrion (COI) and nuclear loci (28S, EF1a and ITS2), and morphometrics.