A DNA and morphology based phylogenetic framework of the ant genus Lasius with hypotheses for the evolution of social parasitism and fungiculture.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Ants of the genus Lasius are ecologically important and an important system for evolutionary research. Progress in evolutionary research has been hindered by the lack of a well-founded phylogeny of the subgenera, with three previous attempts disagreeing. Here we employed two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, 16S ribosomal RNA), comprising 1,265 bp, together with 64 morphological characters, to recover the phylogeny of Lasius by Bayesian and Maximum Parsimony inference after exploration of potential causes of phylogenetic distortion. We use the resulting framework to infer evolutionary pathways for social parasitism and fungiculture.

Results

We recovered two well supported major lineages. One includes Acanthomyops, Austrolasius, Chthonolasius, an

SUBMITTER: Maruyama M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2542377 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature