Of flowers and twigs: phylogenetic revision of the plant-mimicking praying mantises (Mantodea: Empusidae and Hymenopodidae) with a new suprageneric classification

We present a suprageneric revision of the plant-mimicking mantis families Empusidae and Hymenopodidae on the basis of a total-evidence phylogenetic analysis with complete generic representation. We coded 124 characters from external morphology and used these together with a DNA dataset comprising ten gene fragments for an aligned matrix with 7514 nucleic acid sites to estimate phylogenetic relationships. We recovered largely congruent topologies across molecular, morphological and total evidence analyses. Empusidae and its assigned subfamilies were recovered as monophyletic. Hymenopodidae was recovered as paraphyletic with respect to Sibyllidae and Phyllothelyinae (Mantidae) whereas a small assemblage of hymenopodid taxa (GalinthiasStal, CongoharpaxLa Greca, PseudoharpaxSaussure and HarpagomantisKirby) were recovered outside the family. The Caribbean genus EpaphroditaAudinet-Serville was also recovered far from the rest of the hymenopodid subfamily Epaphroditinae, in which it is traditionally classified. The nonmonophyly of Acromantinae was recovered with some species nested within Oxypilinae and others found within Hymenopodinae. We present a new classification scheme that includes an elevated family and subfamily (Galinthiadidae and Phyllocraniinae), two reinstated tribes (Anaxarchini and Otomantini), a family demoted to subfamily rank (Sibyllinae), a newly assigned subfamily to Hymenopodidae transferred from Mantidae (Phyllothelyinae), and new generic assignments to existing higher-level groups. We used our morphological characters to produce extensive re-descriptions of all suprageneric groups as well as character diagnoses. We provide a dichotomous key to genera supported by example illustrations of important morphological features as well as dorsal habitus images of representative specimens.