Capturing genes in historical stonefly museum specimens

Stoneflies (Insecta: Plecoptera) provide pivotal ecosystem services in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems: they are food sources for predators, indicators of water quality, and mediate nutrient cycling and energy flow. Like many insects, stonefly populations have experienced a significant loss of biodiversity. Before predictions about global biogeographical stonefly response to altered climate regimes can be effective, we need to quantify existing diversity, their distributions, and what their evolutionary relationships can tell us. To date, we are missing this vital information. Through the development of the first anchored hybrid enrichment (AHE) probe set for stoneflies, the use of museum specimens and accessibility of phylogenetic studies of stoneflies to other researchers will rapidly increase. AHE is a cost-efficient method for capturing genes in older or degraded museum specimens: this high-throughput sequencing methodology is effective at sequencing damaged or fragmented DNA sequences. My dataset includes both pinned and ethanol-preserved stonefly specimens, collected between 1926 and 2023. Here, I compare the proficiency of the AHE probe set in capturing genes with phylogenetic signal in 188 species of stonefly in a global order-level phylogeny.