QUICK LINKS
Database of published phylogenies:
IPD
Synthesis phylogenies:
Insecta 53596 sp
Blattodea 490 sp
Coleoptera 2639 sp
Diptera 3087 sp
Ephemeroptera 283 sp
Hemiptera 1470 sp
Hymenoptera 3928 sp
Lepidoptera 11001 sp
Mantodea 193 sp
Neuropterida 632 sp
Odonata 768 sp
Orthoptera 740 sp
Plecoptera 842 sp
Trichoptera 873 sp
Informational videos:
insectphylo quickstart
Synthesis example, Lepidoptera
Insect Phylogeny Database
Phylogenetic profiling of community DNA
Data also available at:
https://github.com/dchesters/insect_phylogeny_synthesis
https://tree.opentreeoflife.org/curator/collection/view/dchesters/insect-phylogeny-database
UPDATES
2026-02-20: Synthesis phylogeny of insects version 2, 53,596 species. here
2025-08-31: Synthesis phylogeny of INSECTS! 28,517 species. Exact matching COI set.
2025-08-24: Psocodea, Mecoptera
2025-08-20: Thysanoptera
2025-08-18: Archaeognatha, Embioptera
2025-08-15: Updated video tutorials (see quick links above) and references (below)
2025-08-15: Strepsiptera, Zygentoma
2025-08-10: Siphonaptera v1, 138 species, single outgroup Boreus_hyemalis
2025-06-18: Now available, Insect Phylogeny Database version 2, 1400 studies
2024-06-08: Platform launch, Insect Phylogeny Database version 1, click here.
2024-02-17: Odonata v1, 768 species.
2024-01-25: Trichoptera v1, 873 species.
2024-01-08: Example pipeline for phylogenetic placement, click here.
2023-12-18: Ephemeroptera v1, 283 species, supertree backbone from several mitogenomes studies.
2023-12-07: Lepidoptera v2, 11001 species, 101 sourcetrees analyzed.
2023-12-04: Dermaptera v1, 93 species.
2023-12-03: Mantodea v1, 193 species with single outgroup Mastotermes_darwiniensis.
2023-10-31: Plecoptera v1, 842 species constructed using hybrid supertree / constrained supermatrix approach.
2023-08-06: Orthoptera v1, 22 transcriptomes, 27 published sourcetrees analyzed, COIs for 740 species.
2023-07-16: Phasmatodea v1.
REFERENCES
Application of synthesis in phylogenetic profiling
Chesters, Wang, Anttonen, Chen, Cheng, Li, Luo, Orr, Xie, Zhou, Zhu. A Lepidoptera synthesis phylogeny of eleven thousand species and its application in phylogenetic profiling of herbivores; towards an integrative phylogenetic framework for insects. preprint. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.22508.48007
Standardization of machine readable phylogenies
Chesters, Bossert, Orr (2025) [genus]_[species]; Presenting phylogenies to facilitate synthesis. Cladistics, 41: 177-192. https://doi.org/10.1111/cla.12601
Coverage of diversity in the Insect Phylogeny Database
Chesters (2025) Where are the biggest gaps in phylogenetic coverage of insect diversity? Systematic Entomology, 50(1), 221–236. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12652
insectphylo website, synthesis approach (taxon based grafting)
Chesters, Ferrari, Lin, Orr, Staab, Zhu (2023) Launching insectphylo.org; a new hub facilitating construction and use of synthesis molecular phylogenies of insects. Molecular Ecology Resources, 23, 1556–1573. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13817
Trait integration
Xie, Orr, Zhang, Ferrari, Li, Liu, Niu, Wang, Zhou, Hao, Zhu, Chesters D (2023) Phylogeny-based assignment of functional traits to DNA barcodes outperforms distance-based, in a comparison of approaches. Molecular Ecology Resources, 23, 1526–1539. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13813
Synthesis approach (backbone constraint of multigene supermatrix)
Chesters (2020) The phylogeny of insects in the data-driven era. Syst Entomol, 45: 540-551. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12414
