Fig. 1. Molecular phylogenetic tree showing the relationships of different wood-eating cockroaches (species names in bold characters pointed with arrows), based on large portions of genes 12S, 16S, 18S and COII from 44 cockroaches, 1 grasshopper, 1 earwig, 1 mantid and 5 termite species (tree length 9288, CI = 12, RI = 76). Analyses were carried out with Direct Optimization (Wheeler, 1996) implemented in POY. The whole set of analyses was used to state whether Parasphaeria boleiriana appears always unrelated to other wood-feeding cockroaches (Cryptocercus and Panesthiinae–Geoscapheinae) so that their xylophagy and subsocial behaviour (thick lines) appear convergent in the whole and wide space of parameters of sequence alignment. The single tree presented is one of the two resulting trees for the 211 parameter set analysis (transitions = 1, transversions = 1, gaps = 2) which minimized the incongruence among the loci. Bremer branch supports (steps) and Jackknife values (percentages) are given above and below the branches, respectively. Thick lines and arrows indicate xylophagous and subsocial species.

Fig. 2. The same tree presented in Fig. 1, with the results from the sensitivity analysis shown with Navajo rugs. Black boxes indicate monophyly; grey boxes, paraphyly; white boxes indicate polyphyly under the different parameter sets (gap, transversion, transition).

Fig. 3. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree showing the relationships of different wood-eating cockroaches (species names in bold characters pointed with arrows), based on large portions of genes 12S, 16S, 18S and COII from 44 cockroaches, 1 grasshopper, 1 earwig, 1 mantid and 5 termite species. The tree was produced with a maximum likelihood analysis with prealigned data and carried out with PHYML software (model GTR + I + G; ln L = −39633.02) . Thick lines and arrows indicate xylophagous and subsocial species.

Fig. 4. Decay of dead wood of Joannesia princeps Vellozo, “boleira” (Euphorbiaceae) (grey bars), used by Parasphaeria boleiriana compared to the wood from other tree species (black bars). 60 trunks of each category were monitored within two years (1999–2001) in the Brazilian Atlantic forest from Linhares and Sooretama (State of Espirito Santo, Brazil). State 1 corresponds to complete dead trunks, state 2 to incomplete trunks already partly diminished by decay, state 3 to totally transformed trunks remaining only as frass with sometimes some pieces of bark.

Primers sequences (5′ to 3′) used to generate 18S rDNA, 12SrDNA, 16S rDNA and Cytochrome Oxydase II sequences

Cladogram lengths and incongruence values for six different gap–transversion–transition parameters sets

The analysis with the 211 (gap–transversion–transition) parameter set gives the lower ILD value (with an asterisk in the Table). This analysis maximizes the global congruence and is then retained as the best phylogenetic estimate.