Comprehensive phylogeny of Myrmecocystus honey ants highlights cryptic diversity and infers evolution during aridification of the American Southwest

Elst, Tobias van; Eriksson, Ti H.; Gadau, Jürgen; Johnson, Robert A.; Rabeling, Christian; Taylor, Jamie; Borowiec, Marek L.

doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2020.107036

Cited by 18 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…phylogenies inferred for groups younger than 50 My, e.g. a family of frogs (Chan et al 2020), a family of plants (Dupin et al 2020), an ant genus (van Elst et al 2021), and a spider family (Bond et al 2020). The same could be observed in the results that Minh et al (2020) obtained in the datasets that they tested for the method development.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The unresolved phylogenomic tree of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera): assessing the potential causes and consequences

Rota

Twort

Chiocchio

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The field of molecular phylogenetics is being revolutionised with next-generation sequencing technologies making it possible to sequence large numbers of genomes for non-model organisms ushering us into the era of phylogenomics. The current challenge is no longer how to get enough data, but rather how to analyse the data and how to assess the support for the inferred phylogeny. We focus on one of the largest animal groups on the planet - butterflies and moths (order Lepidoptera). We clearly demonstrate that there are unresolved issues in the inferred phylogenetic relationships of the major lineages, despite several recent phylogenomic studies of the group. We assess the potential causes and consequences of the conflicting phylogenetic hypotheses. With a dataset consisting of 331 protein-coding genes and the alignment length over 290 000 base pairs, including 200 taxa representing 81% of lepidopteran superfamilies, we compare phylogenetic hypotheses inferred from amino acid and nucleotide alignments. The resulting two phylogenies are discordant, especially with respect to the placement of the superfamily Gelechioidea, which is likely due to compositional bias of both the nucleotide and amino acid sequences. With a series of analyses, we dissect our dataset and demonstrate that there is sufficient phylogenetic signal to resolve much of the lepidopteran tree of life. Overall, the results from the nucleotide alignment are more robust to the various perturbations of the data that we carried out. However, the lack of support for much of the backbone within Ditrysia makes the current butterfly and moth tree of life still unresolved. We conclude that taxon sampling remains an issue even in phylogenomic analyses, and recommend that poorly sampled highly diverse groups, such as Gelechioidea in Lepidoptera, should receive extra attention in the future.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The unresolved phylogenomic tree of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera): assessing the potential causes and consequences

Rota

Twort

Chiocchio

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Myrmecocystus : We examined 74 workers from six species (Fig 1). This genus is restricted to North America, and it consists of 29 described species [28, 42], plus several undescribed and cryptic species [43]. We compared three size-similar species pairs that differed in pigmentation: small ( M. christineae and M. yuma ), medium ( M. navajo and M. kennedyi ), and large ( M. mexicanus -02 and M. mendax -03 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We compared three size-similar species pairs that differed in pigmentation: small ( M. christineae and M. yuma ), medium ( M. navajo and M. kennedyi ), and large ( M. mexicanus -02 and M. mendax -03 ). All pale species of Myrmecocystus occur in two clades, while dark species comprise the rest of the clades in the genus [43].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Color, activity period, and eye structure in four lineages of ants: pale, nocturnal species have evolved larger eyes and larger facets than their dark, diurnal congeners

Johnson

Rutowski

2021

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The eyes of insects display an incredible diversity of adaptations to enhance vision across the gamut of light levels that they experience. One commonly studied contrast is the difference in eye structure between nocturnal and diurnal species, with nocturnal species typically having features that enhance eye sensitivity such as larger eyes, larger eye facets, and larger ocelli. In this study, we compared eye structure between workers of closely related nocturnal and diurnal above ground foraging ant species (family Formicidae) in four genera (Myrmecocystus, Aphaenogaster, Temnothorax, Veromessor). In all four genera, nocturnal species tend to have little cuticular pigment (pale), while diurnal species are fully pigmented (dark), hence we could use cuticle coloration as a surrogate for activity pattern. Across three genera (Myrmecocystus, Aphaenogaster, Temnothorax), pale species, as expected for nocturnally active animals had larger eyes, larger facet diameters, and larger visual spans compared to their dark, more day active congeners. This same pattern occurred for one pale species of Veromessor, but not the other. There were no consistent differences between nocturnal and diurnal species in interommatidial angles and eye parameters both within and among genera. Hence, the evolution of eye features that enhance sensitivity in low light levels do not appear to have consistent correlated effects on features related to visual acuity. A survey across several additional ant genera found numerous other pale species with enlarged eyes, suggesting these traits evolved multiple times within and across genera. We also compared size of the anterior ocellus in workers of pale versus dark species of Myrmecocystus. In species with larger workers, the anterior ocellus was smaller in pale than in dark species, but this difference mostly disappeared for species with smaller workers. Presence of the anterior ocellus also was size-dependent in the two largest pale species.

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“…1A, B, C), but the monophyly of Lasius was cast into doubt by Blaimer et al (2015), whose analysis of Sanger data suggested paraphyly of the genus with respect to Myrmecocystus. A more recent study using UCEs and a limited taxonomic sampling of the genus recovered Lasius as monophyletic (van Elst et al 2021).…”

Section: Lasius Escamolementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, we included a species closely related to or conspecific with the aberrant and previously unsampled species, Lasius atopus, from California, U.S.A. as well as another unsampled species, Lasius myrmidon, described from Greece (Mei 1998). Although we included only three species of Myrmecocystus, they were chosen to span the root node of the genus (O' Meara 2008, van Elst et al 2021). We also included data from all genera recognized in the Prenolepis genus group , LaPolla et al 2012, the majority of formicine genera, and a sample of formicoid outgroups.…”

Section: Lasius Escamolementioning

confidence: 99%

Phylogeny, evolution, and classification of the ant genusLasius, the tribe Lasiini, and the subfamily Formicinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Boudinot

2021

Preprint

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Within the Formicidae, the higher classification of nearly all subfamilies has been recently revised due to the findings of molecular phylogenetics. Here, we integrate morphology and molecular data to holistically address the evolution and classification of the ant genus Lasius, its tribe Lasiini, and their subfamily Formicinae. We accomplish this through a critical re-examination of morphology of extant and fossil taxa, molecular phylogenetic analyses, total-evidence dating under fossilized birth-death process, phylogeography, and ancestral state estimation. We use these results to provide revised taxonomic definitions for the Lasiini and select genera, and we provide a key to the genera of the Lasiini with emphasis on the Lasius genus group. We find that the crown Lasiini originated around the end of the Cretaceous on the Eurasian continent and is divisible into four morphologically distinct clades: Cladomyrma, the Lasius genus group, the Prenolepis genus group, and a previously undetected lineage we name XXXgen. n. The crown of the Lasius genus group is considerably younger than that of the Prenolepis genus group, indicating that extinction has played a major role in the evolution of the former clade. Lasius itself is divided into two well-supported monophyletic groups which are approximately equally speciose. We present evidence that temporary social parasitism and fungiculture arose in Lasius two times independently. Additionally, we recover the paraphyly of three Lasius subgenera and propose replacing all subgenera with an informal species group classification: Lasius = Acanthomyopssyn. rev., = Austrolasiussyn. n., = Cautolasiussyn. n., = Chthonolasius vsyn. n., = Dendrolasiussyn. n. Total-evidence analysis reveals that the Baltic-region amber fossil species Lasius pumilus and Pseudolasius boreus are misplaced to genus; we therefore designate XXXgen. n. for the former and XXXgen. n. for the latter. Further, we transfer XXX and Glaphyromyrmex out of the tribe, considering the former to be incertae sedis in the subfamily, and the latter a member of the Formicini (tribal transfer). Two final taxonomic actions are deemed necessary: synonymy of Lasius escamole Reza, 1925 with Liometopum apiculatum Mayr, 1870 syn. n. (subfamilial transfer), and transfer of Paratrechina kohli to Anoplolepis (tribal transfer, forming A. kohli (Forel, 1916) n. comb.).

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Comprehensive phylogeny of Myrmecocystus honey ants highlights cryptic diversity and infers evolution during aridification of the American Southwest

Cited by 18 publications

References 78 publications

The unresolved phylogenomic tree of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera): assessing the potential causes and consequences

The unresolved phylogenomic tree of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera): assessing the potential causes and consequences

Color, activity period, and eye structure in four lineages of ants: pale, nocturnal species have evolved larger eyes and larger facets than their dark, diurnal congeners

Phylogeny, evolution, and classification of the ant genusLasius, the tribe Lasiini, and the subfamily Formicinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

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