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Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol

Abstract. Madagascar and its surrounding islands are among the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots, harboring predominantly endemic and threatened communities meriting special attention from biodiversity scientists. Building on the considerable efforts in recent years to inventory the Malagasy an...

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Autores principales: Csősz, Sándor, Fisher, Brian L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Pensoft Publishers 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4607843/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26487823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.526.6037
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author Csősz, Sándor
Fisher, Brian L.
author_facet Csősz, Sándor
Fisher, Brian L.
author_sort Csősz, Sándor
collection PubMed
description Abstract. Madagascar and its surrounding islands are among the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots, harboring predominantly endemic and threatened communities meriting special attention from biodiversity scientists. Building on the considerable efforts in recent years to inventory the Malagasy ant fauna, the myrmicine genus Nesomyrmex is reviewed and (1) subdivided into four major groups based on salient morphological features corroborated by numeric morphology: angulatus-, hafahafa-, madecassus- and sikorai-groups, and (2) the hafahafa species-group endemic to Madagascar is revised. Diversity within hafahafa species-group was assessed via hypothesis-free nest-centroid-clustering combined with gap statistic to assess the number of clusters and to determine the most probable boundaries between them. This combination of methods provides a highly automatized, objective species delineation protocol based on continuous morphometric data. Delimitations of clusters recognized by these exploratory analyses were tested via confirmatory Linear Discriminant Analysis. These results suggest the existence of four morphologically distinct species, Nesomyrmex capricornis sp. n., Nesomyrmex hafahafa sp. n., Nesomyrmex medusus sp. n. and Nesomyrmex spinosus sp. n.; all are described and an identification key for their worker castes using morphometric data is provided. Two members of the newly outlined hafahafa species-group, Nesomyrmex hafahafa sp. n., Nesomyrmex medusus sp. n., are distributed along the southeastern coast Madagascar and occupy rather large ranges, but two other species, Nesomyrmex capricornis sp. n. and Nesomyrmex spinosus sp. n., are only known to occur in small and isolated forest, highlighting the importance of small forest patches for conserving arthropod diversity.
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spelling pubmed-46078432015-10-20 Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol Csősz, Sándor Fisher, Brian L. Zookeys Research Article Abstract. Madagascar and its surrounding islands are among the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots, harboring predominantly endemic and threatened communities meriting special attention from biodiversity scientists. Building on the considerable efforts in recent years to inventory the Malagasy ant fauna, the myrmicine genus Nesomyrmex is reviewed and (1) subdivided into four major groups based on salient morphological features corroborated by numeric morphology: angulatus-, hafahafa-, madecassus- and sikorai-groups, and (2) the hafahafa species-group endemic to Madagascar is revised. Diversity within hafahafa species-group was assessed via hypothesis-free nest-centroid-clustering combined with gap statistic to assess the number of clusters and to determine the most probable boundaries between them. This combination of methods provides a highly automatized, objective species delineation protocol based on continuous morphometric data. Delimitations of clusters recognized by these exploratory analyses were tested via confirmatory Linear Discriminant Analysis. These results suggest the existence of four morphologically distinct species, Nesomyrmex capricornis sp. n., Nesomyrmex hafahafa sp. n., Nesomyrmex medusus sp. n. and Nesomyrmex spinosus sp. n.; all are described and an identification key for their worker castes using morphometric data is provided. Two members of the newly outlined hafahafa species-group, Nesomyrmex hafahafa sp. n., Nesomyrmex medusus sp. n., are distributed along the southeastern coast Madagascar and occupy rather large ranges, but two other species, Nesomyrmex capricornis sp. n. and Nesomyrmex spinosus sp. n., are only known to occur in small and isolated forest, highlighting the importance of small forest patches for conserving arthropod diversity. Pensoft Publishers 2015-10-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4607843/ /pubmed/26487823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.526.6037 Text en Sándor Csősz, Brian L. Fisher http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Csősz, Sándor
Fisher, Brian L.
Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title_full Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title_fullStr Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title_full_unstemmed Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title_short Diagnostic survey of Malagasy Nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
title_sort diagnostic survey of malagasy nesomyrmex species-groups and revision of hafahafa group species via morphology based cluster delimitation protocol
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4607843/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26487823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.526.6037
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