PHYLOGENY AND TAXONOMY OF CASEBEARER MOTHS (COLEOPHORIDAE, LEPIDOPTERA) BASED ON MOLECULAR GENETIC DATA. 2. RECONSTRUCTION OF DIVERGENCE TIME FOR MAJOR COLEOPHORIDAE TAXA BASED ON THE VARIABILITY OF THE MTDNA COI GENE

The reconstruction of divergence time for major taxa of the family Coleophoridae carried out by the authors demonstrated that casebearer moths were evolutionarily young, which maybe due to the formation of the first families of the taxa in a specific environment of grassland ecosystems during the Eocene-Oligocene. The analysis of the evolutionary divergence of the species indicated that ancestors of modern taxa from the subfamily Coleophorinae lived in the early Oligocene and probably were related to herbaceous plants of the families Amaranthaceae, Fabaceae, and Asteraceae. In general, the most active processes of speciation among casebearer moths took place in the late Miocene, which may be due to increasing the diversity of habitats in ecosystems and active changes of woody and herbaceous plant formations in the territory of ancient Mediterranean in this historical period.