taxonID	type	description	language	source
232987F5FF80FFC3FF08F91C1348FC59.taxon	description	Within clade 1, E. edentatum presents paraphyletic lineages scattered within E. suzanae and E. muticum (clade 1, Fig. 1). Ectatomma edentatum was first considered as two geographically separated species (Brown 1958): E. edentatum, restrict- ed to southern South America, and Ectatomma morgani, present in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. The species E. morgani was later synonymized under E. edentatum by Kugler and Brown (1982), with an extension of its range to include Panama and Costa Rica. E. suzanae, on the other hand, is a recently described species (Almeida 1986). Most lineage splits within clade 1 represent relatively deep divergences; a new revision of all these taxa is required. Brown (1958), in an early examination of the genus, considered the morphology of E. edentatum as very similar to E. ruidum; however, in our analyses, they prove to be unrelated. In the case of the two most common species, E. ruidum and E. tuberculatum, our results show that both represent independent evolutionary lineages. E. ruidum presents two differentiated clades that colonized Central America independently. These two clades differentiated between 5.5 and 2.5 MYA. E. permagnum E. lugens C L A D E. brunneum E 4 E. opaciventre C E. ruidum L A D E 3 E. gibbum E. vizottoi C L A D E. tuberculatum E 2 E. parasiticum C E. edentatum L A D E. suzanae E E. muticum E. edentatum 1 to biogeographic regional codes for each sample: (A) Parana, (B) Amazonian, (C) Caribbean – Mesoamerican, (D) Chacoan, and (E) Caribbean – north-west South American The first clade included samples from a Mexican population of E. ruidum without microgynes together with samples from Venezuela, while samples from a Mexican population with microgynes grouped with samples from Ecuador and Panama. However, to date, no microgynes have been reported in E. ruidum from Ecuador or Panama (Breed et al. 1990, 1999; Guénard and McGlynn 2013). E. ruidum microgynes have only been found in samples from Mexico (Lachaud et al. 1999 a, b). The two lineages of Mexican E. ruidum live in sympatry on a coastal plain in southern Mexico, with less than 15 km and no noticeable geographical barriers separating the sampled populations. Although some life traits are common in both E. ruidum lineages (e. g. feign of death when workers are disturbed, Cupul-Magaña 2009), in addition to the presence / absence of microgynes, they are differentiated by other biological characters: date of sexuals production (Lachaud, unpublished data) and chemical compounds in their hydrocarbon profiles (Poteaux, unpublished data). At the beginning of the 20 th century, another species was described in central – southwestern Mexico (Michoacan State) by Emery (1901): Ectatomma aztecum. It was revised by Kugler and Brown (1982) and is currently considered to be a junior synonym of E. ruidum. However, the morphology of both E. ruidum forms analyzed here is distinct from the described E. aztecum ’ s morphology (F. Fernandez, personal communication). Therefore, the two E. ruidum lineages may represent two different species: one corresponding to the ‘ true’ E. ruidum and the other to a new, undescribed species. Furthermore, Kugler and Brown (1982) considered in their revision that Ectatomma confine is a very close relative of E. ruidum (only differing in the processes of the mesosoma) and could eventually represent an extreme variant of this species (locality series). We can thus hypothesize that the diversity in E. ruidum — as in other Ectatomma lineages — is underestimated over its distribution range and that a new taxonomic revision based on a holistic approach, combining different fields such as morphology, ecology, and molecular biology, is required. E. gibbum was first described as a new species by Kugler and Brown (1982), with morphology very similar to E. ruidum. Our results show that E. gibbum represents a well-differentiated lineage that might share a common ancestor with the E. ruidum lineage. Our divergence time estimation and ancestral area reconstruction results place the origin of clade 3 (E. ruidum + E. gibbum) in Central America during the Middle or Late Miocene. The closure of the Central American Seaway and consequent formation of the Central American Isthmus occurred during the end of the Pliocene, implying that the ancestor of these species was able to migrate northwards either to an island or to the southernmost part of North America before the isthmus closed. This hypothesis would have to be confirmed with a finer evolutionary reconstruction that includes samples of E. gibbum from northern South America.	en	Nettel-Hernanz, Alejandro, Lachaud, Jean-Paul, Fresneau, Dominique, López-Muñoz, Román A., Poteaux, Chantal (2015): Biogeography, cryptic diversity, and queen dimorphism evolution of the Neotropical ant genus Ectatomma Smith, 1958 (Formicidae, Ectatomminae). Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 15 (3): 543-553, DOI: 10.1007/s13127-015-0215-9, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13127-015-0215-9
232987F5FF80FFC3FF08F91C1348FC59.taxon	description	We acknowledge that our divergence estimates would be greatly improved with the addition of more nuclear markers that are inherited independently and have different coalescence times and historical migration patterns to our predominantly mitochondrial data set. Divergence time estimates from fast-evolving mitochondrial genes could result in overestimation of species divergence times because of their high substitution rate (Dornburg et al. 2014; Zheng et al. 2011). Furthermore, mitochondrial genomes in some groups tend to introgress between related species at a high rate, which would yield inaccurate phylogenetic reconstructions and would impact species divergence time estimations under total evidence analysis (Near and Keck 2013). As stated above, we propose a thorough revision of some specific relationships between Ectatomma species and within E. ruidum and E. tuberculatum, which should include a higher number of markers, as well as other biosystematic studies.	en	Nettel-Hernanz, Alejandro, Lachaud, Jean-Paul, Fresneau, Dominique, López-Muñoz, Román A., Poteaux, Chantal (2015): Biogeography, cryptic diversity, and queen dimorphism evolution of the Neotropical ant genus Ectatomma Smith, 1958 (Formicidae, Ectatomminae). Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 15 (3): 543-553, DOI: 10.1007/s13127-015-0215-9, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13127-015-0215-9
