BECAS
GALBAN Alvaro Andres
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Morpho-space of male wings in Camponotus Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): geometric morphometrics as a powerful tool for taxonomy
Autor/es:
GALBAN, ALVARO; CUEZZO, FABIANA
Lugar:
Curitiba, Paraná
Reunión:
Simposio; XXIII Simpósio de Mirmecologia, An International Ant Meeting.; 2017
Institución organizadora:
Universidade Federal Do Paraná
Resumen:
In the last several years, myrmecology has been enriched by the study of male ants. However, much of this research has been focused on issues related to higher taxonomic levels (=subfamilies or genera). Additional study is needed at the species level. In this regard, geometric morphometrics (GM) is a powerful tool to recognize taxa with similar shapes. Wings have clear homologous points (landmarks) in their veins, which facilitate the use of GM. The aim of this study was to establish the position of Camponotus into the morpho-space of Formicinae and to assess the potential of GM to separate male ants of different species. We improved on existing methodology by using characters from the forewing. In this context, we used 303 forewings of males from: Lasiophanes (1 sp, n=9), Nylanderia (1 sp, n=30), Brachymyrmex (1 sp, n=35), Myrmelachista (1 sp, n=28), and Camponotus (5 sp, n=201). All wings were photographed and analyzed using a total of 13 landmarks in MorphoJ 1.06d (morpho-space=PCA) and PAST3 (Discriminant analysis using PC scores, only in Camponotus). The results indicate that Camponotus has its own identity, well separated from the other genera in the Formicinae morpho-space even when a strong allometric influence is included in the analysis. Only Lasiophanes is close to Camponotus in our analysis. Discriminant analysis also shows a clear separation of the studied species with different combinations of the first three axes and 100% of the variance (98% correctly classified). Because of intraspecific wing variation in males, we did not find the ?Holy Grail? to separate all Camponotus males with GM. But, firstly, this methodology allows to separate species with similar global morphology (in the majority of cases) and, secondly, can guide us in the identification of the specimens. Furthermore, in some cases, when the species are morphologically very close, it is necessary to include other PCs that show valuable information in order to allow their complete separation. The results of this study are preliminary and correspond to the PhD project of the first author. (CONICET Doctoral Fellowship, 2015-2019).