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A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche

BACKGROUND: Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Five of the six recognized subgenera of Old World Dorylus army ants forage in the soil, whereas some species of the sixth subgenus (Anomma) forage in the le...

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Autores principales: Kronauer, Daniel JC, Schöning, Caspar, Vilhelmsen, Lars B, Boomsma, Jacobus J
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17408491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-7-56
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author Kronauer, Daniel JC
Schöning, Caspar
Vilhelmsen, Lars B
Boomsma, Jacobus J
author_facet Kronauer, Daniel JC
Schöning, Caspar
Vilhelmsen, Lars B
Boomsma, Jacobus J
author_sort Kronauer, Daniel JC
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Five of the six recognized subgenera of Old World Dorylus army ants forage in the soil, whereas some species of the sixth subgenus (Anomma) forage in the leaf-litter and some as conspicuous swarm raiders on the forest floor and in the lower vegetation (the infamous driver ants). Here we use a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences to reconstruct the phylogeny of the Dorylus s.l. army ants and to infer the evolutionary transitions in foraging niche and associated morphological adaptations. RESULTS: Underground foraging is basal and gave rise to leaf-litter foraging. Leaf-litter foraging in turn gave rise to two derived conditions: true surface foraging (the driver ants) and a reversal to subterranean foraging (a clade with most of the extant Dorylus s.s. species). This means that neither the subgenus Anomma nor Dorylus s.s. is monophyletic, and that one of the Dorylus s.s. lineages adopted subterranean foraging secondarily. We show that this latter group evolved a series of morphological adaptations to underground foraging that are remarkably convergent to the basal state. CONCLUSION: The evolutionary transitions in foraging niche were more complex than previously thought, but our comparative analysis of worker morphology lends strong support to the contention that particular foraging niches have selected for very specific worker morphologies. The surprising reversal to underground foraging is therefore a striking example of convergent morphological evolution.
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spelling pubmed-18523012007-04-17 A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche Kronauer, Daniel JC Schöning, Caspar Vilhelmsen, Lars B Boomsma, Jacobus J BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Five of the six recognized subgenera of Old World Dorylus army ants forage in the soil, whereas some species of the sixth subgenus (Anomma) forage in the leaf-litter and some as conspicuous swarm raiders on the forest floor and in the lower vegetation (the infamous driver ants). Here we use a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences to reconstruct the phylogeny of the Dorylus s.l. army ants and to infer the evolutionary transitions in foraging niche and associated morphological adaptations. RESULTS: Underground foraging is basal and gave rise to leaf-litter foraging. Leaf-litter foraging in turn gave rise to two derived conditions: true surface foraging (the driver ants) and a reversal to subterranean foraging (a clade with most of the extant Dorylus s.s. species). This means that neither the subgenus Anomma nor Dorylus s.s. is monophyletic, and that one of the Dorylus s.s. lineages adopted subterranean foraging secondarily. We show that this latter group evolved a series of morphological adaptations to underground foraging that are remarkably convergent to the basal state. CONCLUSION: The evolutionary transitions in foraging niche were more complex than previously thought, but our comparative analysis of worker morphology lends strong support to the contention that particular foraging niches have selected for very specific worker morphologies. The surprising reversal to underground foraging is therefore a striking example of convergent morphological evolution. BioMed Central 2007-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC1852301/ /pubmed/17408491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-7-56 Text en Copyright © 2007 Kronauer et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kronauer, Daniel JC
Schöning, Caspar
Vilhelmsen, Lars B
Boomsma, Jacobus J
A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title_full A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title_fullStr A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title_full_unstemmed A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title_short A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
title_sort molecular phylogeny of dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17408491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-7-56
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