Formicidae

Schmidt, Chris, 2013, Molecular phylogenetics of ponerine ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae), Zootaxa 3647 (2), pp. 201-250 : 209

Phylogeny of Formicidae and position of Ponerinae

Bayesian analysis of the combined data set (ALL_DATA) yielded a phylogeny that is broadly congruent with the results of Moreau et al. (2006) and Brady et al. (2006) for subfamily-level relationships within Formicidae ( Fig. 2 ), with strong support for a sister relationship between Leptanillinae and monophyletic poneroid and formicoid groups. The phylogeny differs from these earlier studies primarily in its inclusion of Martialinae , which is inferred as sister to the rest of Formicidae as in Rabeling et al. (2008).

A thorough investigation of the sister group of Ponerinae is outside the scope of this study, but Ponerinae was inferred to be sister to a clade consisting of Paraponera (Paraponerinae) + Tatuidris (Agroecomyrmecinae) , with strong support in the MrBayes analysis (BPP = 1.00 for entire clade, BPP = 0.99 for Paraponera + Tatuidris ) but much lower support in the RAxML bootstrap analysis (BS = 0.42 for the entire clade, BS = 0.43 for Paraponera + Tatuidris ). This relationship was inferred by Moreau et al. (2006), and also by Brady et al. (2006) when their analyses included non-ant outgroups. In contrast, the analysis of Rabeling et al. (2008) reconstructed Ponerinae as sister to the formicoid subfamilies, as did the Formicidae-only analysis of Brady et al. (2006) under certain rootings. Given that these latter studies were unable to reject several alternate rootings of the phylogeny of Formicidae , the sister group of Ponerinae remains unresolved pending additional data. Future sampling of additional non-ant vespoid outgroups and leptanillines, and inclusion of additional genes, may provide better resolution of the basal relationships in Formicidae , including a firmer elucidation of the sister group of Ponerinae .

Figures

FIGURE 2. Consensus cladogram inferred by MrBayes analysis of ALL _ DATA data set, showing relationships among ant subfamilies (non-ant outgroups not shown; the full tree is given in Supp. Fig. S 1). Subfamilies that have at one time been included in Ponerinae are marked with an asterisk. Clade support is indicated by solid (MrBayes BPP = 1.00) and empty (0.95 <BPP <0.99) circles and solid (RAxML BS = 1.00) and empty (0.95 <BS <0.99) triangles. Cerapachyinae is probably actually non-monophyletic (Moreau et al., 2006; Brady et al., 2006).