Communities of insects around the world consist of unique sets of species that have evolved under different historical processes of assembly and lineage diversification. Whole-community phylogenetics can partition the shared and uniquely derived evolutionary history at sites. We used mitochondrial genome sequences of >1000 species each from two assemblages of Coleoptera (beetles) in distantly situated tropical lowland rainforest of Malaysia and Panama for phylogenetic reconstruction and community ecological analysis. Assemblages were entirely distinct at species level but were surprisingly similar at family level in their overall composition and relative species richness, despite a high degree of phylogenetic clustering that implied independent evolution. Inclusion of species poor lineages reduced the level of community clustering in parallel in both sites, indicating lineage-specific factors to determine species richness and their effect on local community composition. In conclusion, relative species richness in local community composition and global clade sizes are connected, in part due to biotic exchange in deep time, but more likely because of intrinsic rates of diversification unique to each clade (family), thus making assembly composition more predictable, i.e. the ‘evolutionary tape’ would be similar wherever a new assemblage of tropical-forest Coleoptera arises.