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 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 the

SUBMITTER: Csosz S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4607843 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature