Insect Systematics, Phylogeny and Evolution

The section “Insect Systematics, Phylogeny and Evolution” is focused on understanding the evolutionary histories and biodiversity of insects and other arthropods. The emphasis is on advances in our understanding of the evolutionary relationships amongst diverse insect taxa, including intraspecific characterisations and the diversification of lineages through time. The tools used to learn about their systematics, phylogeny, and evolution include studying comparative and developmental morphology, life histories and behaviour, adaptations, paleobiology, phylogeography, population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, mitogenomics, and phylogenomics. Manuscripts with more of an emphasis on understanding the molecular functions rather than evolutionary relationships would be better suited to the section Insect Molecular Biology and Genomics. 

• Detailed instructions on new species descriptions and the formatting of genus and species names can be found in the Instructions for Authors section: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/insects/instructions.

• Manuscripts that only rely on morphological characteristics to describe a single new species or multiple new species in species-rich taxa will not be considered unless there is an exceptional rationale.

• Insects does not encourage manuscripts whose primary contribution is the production of mitochondrial genome data, with minimal, routine phylogenetic analysis. Submissions should emphasize meaningful scientific inference rather than data production alone. Manuscripts must present a clear phylogenetic question, demonstrate how the analyses address that question, and interpret the results within the broader evolutionary and taxonomic context of the insect group. Newly generated mitogenomic data may be included as supporting information but should not constitute the main focus of the manuscript. Largely descriptive figures of conserved mitogenome features should be placed in the supplementary materials.