Phylogenetic analysis and systematic position of two new species of the ant genus Crematogaster (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) from Southeast Asia

  • Shingo Hosoishi Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Kyushu University, 6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8581
  • Kazuo Ogata Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Kyushu University, 6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8581
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2017.370
Keywords: biogeography, divergence time estimation, morphological assignment, nuclear genes, phylogenetic position

Abstract

Two distinct new species of the ant genus Crematogaster, C. khmerensis sp. nov. and C. pfeifferi sp. nov., are described from Cambodia and Malaysia, respectively. The two species are unique among Asian Crematogaster in that they have vertically directed propodeal spines, but their systematic positions have not been determined based on morphological characters alone. Molecular phylogenetic analysis of 89 Crematogaster taxon matrices previously published plus C. khmerensis sp. nov., using nuclear genes, reveals that C. khmerensis sp. nov. is nested within the Australo-Asian Crematogaster clade. Morphological assignment of the developed pronotal shoulders implies a close relationship between C. khmerensis sp. nov. and the C. tetracantha-group. Based on molecular and morphological evidence, we erect a new species group, C. khmerensis-group, to contain C. khmerensis sp. nov. and C. pfeifferi sp. nov. Divergence time estimates using MCMCTree shows that the root node of the C. khmerensis sp. nov. terminal is estimated to be of middle Miocene age at 15 million years old. The position of the C. khmerensis-group well supports the Oriental- to Australian-region dispersal history that has been proposed for the Australo-Asian Crematogaster clade.

References

AntWeb. Available from https://www.antweb.org [accessed Mar. 2016].

Blaimer B.B. 2012a. Untangling complex morphological variation: taxonomic revision of the subgenus Crematogaster (Oxygyne) in Madagascar, with insight into the evolution and biogeography of this enigmatic ant clade (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Systematic Entomology 37 (2): 240–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3113.2011.00609.x

Blaimer B.B. 2012b. A subgeneric revision of Crematogaster and discussion of regional species-groups (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 3482: 47–67.

Blaimer B.B. 2012c. Acrobat ants go global–Origin, evolution and systematics of the genus Crematogaster (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 65: 421–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2012.06.028

Blaimer B.B. & Fisher B.L. 2013. Taxonomy of the Crematogaster degeeri-species-assemblage in the Malagasy region (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). European Journal of Taxonomy 51: 1–64. https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2013.51

Bolton B. 2014. An Online Catalog of the Ants of the World. Available from http://antcat.org [accessed Jan. 2016].

Brandão C.R.F. 2000. Major regional and type collections of ants (Formicidae) of the World and sources for the identification of ant species. In: Agosti D., Majer J.D., Alonso L.E. & Schultz T.R. (eds) Ants: Standard methods for measuring and monitoring biodiversity: 172–185. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington & London.

Creighton W.S. 1945. Observations on the subgenus Rhachiocrema with the description of a new species from Borneo. Psyche 52: 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1155/1945/35419

Feldhaar H., Maschiwitz U. & Fiala B. 2016. Taxonomic revision of the obligate plant-ants of the genus Crematogaster Lund (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae), associated with Macaranga Thouars (Euphorbiaceae) on Borneo and the Malay Peninsula. Sociobiology 63: 651–681. https://doi.org/10.13102/sociobiology.v63i1.949

Fischer G., Azorsa F., Hita Garcia F., Mikheyev A.S. & Economo E.P. 2015. Two new phragmotic ant species from Africa: morphology and next-generation sequencing solve a caste association problem in the genus Carebara Westwood. ZooKeys 525: 77–105. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.525.6057

Goloboff P., Farris J. & Nixon K. 2008. TNT, a free program for phylogenetic analysis. Cladistics 24: 774–786. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2008.00217.x

Hölldobler B. & Wilson E.O. 1990. The Ants. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Hosoishi S. 2009. A new species from Crematogaster the subgenus Orthocrema in Asia (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Japanese Journal of Systematic Entomology 15: 259–262.

Hosoishi S. & Ogata K. 2009. A taxonomic revision of the Asian endemic subgenus Physocrema of the genus Crematogaster (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 2062: 15–36.

Hosoishi S., Yamane Sk. & Ogata K. 2010. Subterranean species of the ant genus Crematogaster in Asia (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Entomological Science 13: 345–350. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1479-8298.2010.00390.x

Hosoishi S. & Ogata K. 2016 Systematics and biogeography of the ant genus Crematogaster Lund subgenus Orthocrema Santschi in Asia (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 176: 547–606. https://doi.org/10.1111/zoj.12330

Lanfear R., Calcott B., Ho S.Y.W. & Guindon S. 2012. Partition Finder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analysis. Molecular Biology and Evolution 29: 1695–1701. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mss020

Lohman D.J., de Bruyn M., Page T., Rintelen K. von, Hall R., Ng P.K.L., Shin H.-T., Carvalho G.R. & Rintelen T. von. 2011. Biogeography of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 42: 205–226. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102710-145001

Longino J.T. 2003. The Crematogaster (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmicinae) of Costa Rica. Zootaxa 151: 1–150. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.151.1.1

Moreau C.S., Bell C.D., Vila R., Archibald S.B. & Pierce N.E. 2006. Phylogeny of the ants: diversification in the age of angiosperms. Science 312: 101–104. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1124891

Nixon K.C. 2002. Winclada (BETA) ver. 1.00.08. Published by the author. Ithaca, New York.

Rambaut A., Suchard M.A., Xie D. & Drummond A.J. 2014. Tracer v1.6. Available from http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/tracer/

Reis M. dos & Yang Z. 2011. Approximate likelihood calculation on a phylogeny for Bayesian estimation of divergence times. Molecular Biology and Evolution 28: 2161–2172. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr045

Ronquist F. & Huelsenbeck J.P. 2003. MrBayes 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinformatics 19: 1572–1574. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btg180

Swofford D.L. 2002. PAUP*. Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (*and other methods). Version 4. Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, Sunderland, Massachusetts. Available from http://paup.scs.fsu.edu/

Tamura K., Peterson D., Peterson N., Stecher G., Nei M. & Kumar S. 2011. MEGA5: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Molecular Biology and Evolution 28: 2731–2739. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121

Ward P.S. 2006. The ant genus Tetraponera in the Afrotropical region: synopsis of species groups and revision of the T. ambigua-group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Myrmecologische Nachrichten 8: 119–130.

Ward P.S. & Downie D.A. 2005. The ant subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): phylogeny and evolution of big-eyed arboreal ants. Systematic Entomology 30: 310–335. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3113.2004.00281.x

Ward P.S., Brady S.G., Fisher B.L. & Schultz T.R. 2015. The evolution of myrmicine ants: phylogeny and biogeography of a hyperdiverse ant clade (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Systematic Entomology 40: 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12090

Ward P.S. & Fisher B.L. 2016. Tales of dracula ants: the evolutionary history of the ant subfamily Amblyoponinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Systematic Entomology 41: 683–693. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12186

Wheeler W.M. 1927. The physiognomy of insects. Quarterly Review of Biology 2: 1–36.

Yamane S., Tanaka O.H. & Itioka T. 2011. Rediscovery of Crematogaster subgenus Colobocrema (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Southeast Asia. Zootaxa 2999: 63–68.

Yang Z. 2007. PAML 4: Phylogenetic Analysis by Maximum Likelihood. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24: 1586–1591. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msm088

Zwickl D.J. 2006. Genetic algorithm approaches for the phylogenetic analysis of large biological sequence datasets under the maximum likelihood criterion. PhD thesis, The University of Texas, Austin.

Published
2017-11-24
How to Cite
Hosoishi, S., & Ogata, K. (2017). Phylogenetic analysis and systematic position of two new species of the ant genus Crematogaster (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) from Southeast Asia. European Journal of Taxonomy, (370). https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2017.370
Issue
No. 370 (2017): Phylogenetic analysis and systematic position of two new species of the ant genus Crematogaster (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) from Southeast Asia
Section
Entomology
Copyright (c) 2017 Shingo Hosoishi, Kazuo Ogata

Creative Commons Copyright Notices

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are NOT ALLOWED TO post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to taxonomic issues.