Evolutionary history of ponerine ants highlights how the timing of dispersal events shapes modern biodiversity.

ABSTRACT: Disentangling the drivers of global biodiversity patterns is a cornerstone of biogeography that remains elusive for many diverse biological groups. Here we present a complete species-level phylogeny of the ant subfamily Ponerinae based on new genomic sequencing and taxonomic grafting. We combine results with a large-scale geographic database to explore the contribution of three main mechanisms in shaping global ponerine biodiversity patterns: time for accumulation, differences in diversification rate, and asymmetric dispersal. We show that extant ponerine ants originated in Gondwana, spread eastward across tropical bioregions, and more recently colonized temperate areas. The relative timing of colonization events was identified as the prominent driver of present-day biodiversity patterns,

SUBMITTER: Dore M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12441156 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature