Pleistocene population differentiation in the ant Myrmica scabrinodis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) – a taxonomic borderline case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25674/357Keywords:
Cryptic species, numeric morphology-based alpha-taxonomy, zoogeography, glacial refuge centers, ecological nicheAbstract
Three taxa have been supposed in the past to be conspecific with or heterospecific from Myrmica scabrinodis Nylander 1846:
M. rugulosoides Forel 1915, M. pilosiscapus Bondroit 1920 and M. martini Seifert et al. 2014. The taxonomic relations of these taxa are investigated here based on 146 nest samples with 479 worker individuals collected in the whole Palaearctic range extending from the Pyrenees and England to South Central Siberia (Baikal region). Exploratory and hypothesis-driven data analyses considering 17 morphometric characters confirmed two main clusters: a western cluster distributed from 5°W to about 22°E and an eastern cluster occurring from 6°E to 104°E. The classification error of the exploratory data analyses NC-NMDS.kmeans and PCA relative to the controlling linear discriminant function (LDA) were 1.4 % and 0.7 % respectively. At the first hand, this seemed to justify considering the two clusters as separate species. The posterior probabilities of the type series when run as wild-card runs in a LDA were 0.9366 in M. rugulosoides, 0.9999 in M. martini, 0.0284 in M. scabrinodis and 0.0081 in M. pilosiscapus – allocating the former two to western cluster and the latter two to the eastern cluster. However, strong and highly significant reduction of morphological distance between the western and eastern cluster in the sympatric zone (ranging from 6°E to 22°E) compared to the situation in the allopatric ranges indicates frequent hybridization and introgression of genes. Due to this morphological convergence in sympatry, M. rugulosoides, M. pilosiscapus and M. martini are considered as junior synonyms of M. scabrinodis. The placement of the main Pleistocene refuge centers of M. scabrinodis concluded from data of this study is congruent to the picture derived from a mtDNA haplotype analysis of Leppänen et al. (2012) in Myrmica rubra (Linnaeus, 1758): South France and the Apennine Peninsula for the western group and the Balkans, Middle Asia and SW Siberia for the eastern group. Conclusions on nearly equal glacial retreat and postglacial expansion routes of M. scabrinodis and M. rubra are also supported by the high overlap of their realized niches found in the broad-based survey of Seifert (2017) and their almost congruent actual geographic ranges.
Downloads
References
Bagherian, A., W. Münch & B. Seifert (2012): A first demonstration of interspecific hybridization in Myrmica ants by geometric morphometrics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) – Myrmecological News 17: 121–131.
Csősz, S. & B. L. Fisher (2015): Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol. – ZooKeys 526: 19–59 [https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.526.6037].
Csősz, S., B. Seifert, M. László, Z. M. Yusupov & G. Herczeg (2023): Broadly sympatric occurrence of two thief ant species Solenopsis fugax (Latreille, 1798) and S. juliae (Arakelian, 1991) in the East European Pontic-Caspian region (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) is disclosed. – Zookeys 1187: 189–222 [https://doi.org/10.3897/Zookeys.1187.105866 (21 Dec 2023)].
De Lattin, G. (1949): Beiträge zur Zoogeographie des Mittelmeergebietes. – Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft Kiel 1948: 143–151.
De Lattin, G. (1967): Grundriss der Zoogeographie. – Fischer, Stuttgart, 602 pp.
Leppänen, J., K. Vepsäläine & R. Savolainen (2011): Phylogeography of the ant Myrmica rubra and its inquiline social parasite – Ecology and Evolution 1(1): 46–62 [https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6.]
Leppänen, J., K. Vepsäläinen, H. Anthoni & R. Savolainen (2012): Comparative phylogeography of the ants Myrmica ruginodis and Myrmica rubra. – Journal of Biogeography 40: 479–491 [https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.12026].
Pusch, K., B. Seifert, S. Foitzik & J. Heinze (2006): Distribution and genetic divergence of two parapatric sibling ant species in Central Europe. – Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 88: 223–234.
Radchenko, A. & G. W. Elmes (2010): Myrmica ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Old World. – Natura Optima Dux Foundation, Warszawa, 789 pp.
Seifert, B. (1995): Two new Central European subspecies of Leptothorax nylanderi (Förster, 1850) and Leptothorax sordidulus Müller, 1923 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). – Abhandlungen und Berichte des Naturkundemuseums Görlitz 68(7): 1–18.
Seifert, B. (2000): Myrmica lonae Finzi, 1926 - a species separate from Myrmica sabuleti Meinert, 1861 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). – Abhandlungen und Berichte des Naturkundemuseums Görlitz 72: 195–205.
Seifert, B. (2002): The “type” of Myrmica bessarabica Nassonov 1889 and the identity of Myrmica salina Ruzsky 1905 (Hymenoptera:Formicidae, Myrmicinae). – Mitteilungen der Münchner Entomologischen Gesellschaft 92: 93–100.
Seifert, B. (2003): The Palaearctic members of the Myrmica schencki group with description of a new species (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). – Beiträge zur Entomologie 53(1): 141–159.
Seifert, B. (2005): Rank elevation in two European ant species: Myrmica lobulicornis Nylander, 1857, stat.n. and Myrmica spinosior Santschi, 1931, stat.n. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). – Myrmecologische Nachrichten 7: 1–7.
Seifert, B. (2008): Removal of allometric variance improves species separation in multi-character discriminant functions when species are strongly allometric and exposes diagnostic characters. – Myrmecological News 11: 91–105.
Seifert, B. (2011): A taxonomic revision of the Eurasian Myrmica salina species complex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). – Soil Organisms 83: 169–186.
Seifert. B. (2017): The ecology of Central European non-arboreal ants – 37 years of a broad-spectrum analysis under permanent taxonomic control. – Soil Organisms 89(1): 1–67
Seifert, B. (2018): The Ants of Central and North Europe. – Lutra Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft , Tauer, 408 pp.
Seifert, B. (2019): A taxonomic revision of the members of the Camponotus lateralis species group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Europe, Asia Minor and Caucasia. – Soil Organisms 91(1): 7–32.
Seifert, B. (2020): A taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic members of the subgenus Lasius s.str. (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). – Soil Organisms 92(1): 15–94.
Seifert, B., B.C. Schlick-Steiner & F. Steiner (2009): Myrmica constricta Karavajev, 1934 – a cryptic sister species of Myrmica hellenica Finzi, 1926 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). –Soil Organisms 81: 53–76.
Seifert, B., M. Ritz & S. Csősz (2013): Application of Exploratory Data Analyses opens a new perspective in morphology-based alpha-taxonomy of eusocial organisms. – Myrmecological News 19: 1–15.
Seifert, B., A. Bagherian Yazdi & R. Schultz (2014): Myrmica martini sp.n. – a cryptic species of the Myrmica scabrinodis species complex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) revealed by geometric morphometrics and nest-centroid clustering. – Myrmecological News 19: 171–181.
Seifert, B., R. Schultz, M. Ritz & C. M. Ritz (2018): Cryptic species of the Myrmica tibetana complex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) revealed by integrative taxonomy. – Myrmecological News 27: 1–18.
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 SOIL ORGANISMSSoil Organisms is committed to fair open access publishing. All articles are available online without publication fees. Articles published from Vol. 96 No. 3 (2024) onwards are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Articles published from Vol. 80 No. 1 through Vol. 96 No. 2 are available under the previous terms, allowing non-commercial, private, and scientific use.
