Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Royal Entomological Society Journal Awards.
Systematic Entomology is a Royal Entomological Society journal that focuses on publishing research papers concerning insect systematics, phylogenetics, and integrative taxonomy.
This journal seeks contributions with broad biological, evolutionary, or zoogeographical significance, making it particularly appealing to researchers interested in arthropods, biogeography, entomology, evolutionary biology, and insect-related topics. Descriptive morphology, phylogeny, systematics, and taxonomy are among the key areas covered, providing a comprehensive platform for advancing the understanding of insect diversity and evolution.
Systematic Entomology Winner
Junchen Deng: Phylogenomic insights into the relationship and the evolutionary history of planthoppers (Insecta: Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha) 50.3
Junchen Deng completed his bachelor’s studies at Beijing Normal University, China, thereafter moving to Sweden and finishing his master’s degree at Lund University. His master’s thesis was about the genetic diversity and distribution of the endosymbiont Wolbachia in populations of the blue-tailed damselfly.
This was the time when he became interested in host-symbiont interactions, especially in insect hosts, and genomics. He then pursued his PhD at Jagiellonian University, Poland, studying the genome evolution of ancient endosymbionts in the sap-feeding insect group planthoppers.
Green Snout Lanternfly (Pyrops viridirostris)
Photo credit: Vijay Anand Ismavel
Now Junchen Deng is a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, working on the evolution of symbiotic fungi in hemipteran insects. Although his work concerns mostly the symbionts, the phylogeny and evolutionary history of insect hosts are critical to understand how these symbionts evolve across species and time. The nominated article represents the work he did in the during part of his PhD.
Planthopper.
Photo credit: Piotr Łukasik
This study represents the first work on the phylogenetic relationships of worldwide planthoppers using genome-level data. In total, he and his co-authors assembled 1164 nuclear single-copy genes and 13 mitochondrial protein-coding genes from 286 planthopper species representing 19 out of 21 extant families. This allowed them to infer the planthopper phylogeny with the highest resolution to date.
Raivuna sp.
Photo credit: Piotr Łukasik
By including many key species that have been sequenced for the first time, they recovered novel placements for several taxa, such as the early branching of the family Achilixiidae in the superfamily Fulgoroidea. Based on molecular and morphological evidence, they proposed the establishment of a new family Borysthenidae stat. rev. within Delphacoidea and a new superfamily Meenoploidea superfam. nov.
Ricaniiae Planthopper.
Photo credit: Piotr Łukasik
By implementing 30 carefully selected fossils and various schemes of prior distributions and age constraints, they provided the most comprehensive analyses on when each planthopper family diversified. Notably, their analyses dated the origin of extant Fulgoromorpha to at least Guadalupian, Permian (~263 Ma).
This work serves as a foundation for his interests in the reductive genome evolution in ancient symbionts across planthopper families. Relevant work has also been published in Nature Communications under the title ‘Convergent extreme reductive evolution in ancient planthopper symbioses’ (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69238-x).
The distribution of the ancient symbionts Sulcia and Vidania across planthopper phylogeny, and the organization of symbionts within host tissues. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69238-x
Planthopper whiteheadi.
Photo credit: Piotr Łukasik
“This contribution integrates several lines of evidence to assess the evolutionary relationships and time of origin of planthoppers (Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha), a lineage of sap-feeding insects that has been used as a model organism for studying host-symbiont interactions and has economic importance as a crop pest.
With a taxon sampling representing 19 out of the 21 extant families, this study provides a robust evolutionary hypothesis of Fulgoromorpha that can be used as a framework for understanding of biotic interactions and symbioses between planthoppers and other organisms.“
– Judges’ comments
