Análise filogenética de Anochetus Mayr, 1961 e Odontomachus Latreille, 1804 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae) e revisão taxonômica de Anochetus para a região Neotropical

Abstract

Ants in the genera Anochetus and Odontomachus belong to one of the largest clades in the subfamily Ponerinae. A recent molecular phylogeny for the subfamily Ponerinae has suggested that the genus Anochetus is a member of the Ponerini tribe and that its sister group is the genus Odontomachus. In this study the monophyly of the subfamily was strongly supported, but the relations between the genera belonging to the Ponerini tribe, as well as Anochetus and Odontomachus were not well established. Here we present a more detailed molecular phylogenetic analysis, including a larger number of species of both genera, and from diverse biogeographical regions, in order to prove the relationships between the two genera and between Brown's species groups. We obtained DNA sequence data from one mitochondrial (COI) and four nuclear protein-coding genes (Wg, TOPI, LW Rh e CAD) for a total of 207 ingroup and 14 outgroup specimens. Twelve fossil species were used to calibrate divergence-time and biogeographic analyses. Bayesian and maximum-likelihood (RAxML and GARLI) analyses strongly support the monophyly of the genera Anochetus and Odontomachus. They also strongly support nine Odontomachus and 12 Anochetus species groups that are mostly concordant with Brown's hypotheses. The analyses indicate that Odontoponera is the sister group of the Anochetus + Odontomachus clade, suggesting that trap-jaw ants evolved from a short-mandibled ancestor. Anochetus + Odontomachus originated in the early Paleocene (64.8 Ma), likely in the Neotropical, Afrotropical, or Indomalayan regions, where they have radiated rapidly in the last 50 million years, subsequently dispersing multiple times to Africa, Asia, and Australia. The Neotropical region currently has 26 species, distributed from northern Mexico to northern Argentina and some Caribbean islands. Based on morphological similarities, Brown divided the neotropical Anochetus species into five groups: A. emarginatus, A. bispinosus, A. inermis, A. mayri e A. altisquamis. Since then, five new species have been described, four in the emarginatus group and one in the bispinosus group, but without explicit taxonomic treatments of shared characters. Here, we present the first Neotropical review for the genus, after almost 40 years, also taking into account the groups of species recognized for the neotropic. From the 26 Anochetus species previously known, 22 were redescribed based on the examination of type- material. Based on the type-material study, a new synonymy and three new species were recognized for the Neotropical region. The species now have identification keys for workers, queens and males and their respective distributions have been updated. For the Neotropical region, Anochetus has now 28 species and six groups of species: A. altisquamis, A. bispinosus, A. emarginatus, A. hohenbergiae, A. inermis and A. mayri .