Nylanderia bourbonica

Williams, Jason L., Zhang, Y. Miles, LaPolla, John S., Schultz, Ted R. & Lucky, Andrea, 2022, Phylogenomic Delimitation of Morphologically Cryptic Species in Globetrotting Nylanderia (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Species Complexes, Insect Systematics and Diversity (AIFB) 6 (1), pp. 1-15 : 6

Nylanderia bourbonica Complex

Monophyly of the bourbonica complex is strongly supported by the global ML phylogeny ( Fig. 2 ), the unphased MSC phylogeny ( Fig. 3A ), and the phased MSC phylogeny ( Fig. 3B ). Five morphospecies of those sampled here belong to the bourbonica complex: N. bourbonica , N. vaga , N. obscura, N. Fij 4, and N. sp. MJ10; the last two are undescribed species from Fiji and The Philippines, respectively. Both MSC analyses of the bourbonica complex strongly support N. bourbonica and N. vaga as independent, monophyletic species and inclusion of previously unstudied species refutes their previously hypothesized status as sister taxa. Nylanderia bourbonica emerged as sister to N. sp. Fij4 from Fiji. Nylanderia vaga is most closely related to a clade comprised of N. sp. MJ10 and N. obscura . Seven specimens previously misidentified as N. bourbonica instead belong to two other morphospecies closely related to the bourbonica complex. This strongly supported clade of morphospecies resembling N. bourbonica includes Nylanderia spp. 05 and 08 from southern China and Hong Kong ( Fig. 3A and B ).

Figures

Fig. 2. Circular maximum likelihood phylogeny of Nylanderia generated in IQ-TREE 2 from the 80% complete SWSC-partitioned UCE matrix. Biogeography of terminal taxa is based on inferred native ranges and may not indicate collecting locality for known non-native species. Samples indicated with red text are globetrotting species. Nodal support is provided in SH-aLRT (Shimodaira–Hasegawa approximate likelihood ratio test) values on the left side of the node, and UFBoot (ultrafast bootstrap) values on the right side of the node. For both support values, less than 80% is considered weak support, between 80 and 94.9% is considered moderate support, and greater than or equal to 95% is considered strong support.

Fig. 3. Multi-species coalescent (MSC) phylogenies of the Australasian/Indomalayan clade including the bourbonica complex, generated in ASTRAL-III using 75% complete alignment matrices. (A) (left) represents the unphased MSC analysis and (B) (right) represents the phased MSC analysis.Values on the internal nodes represent local posterior probabilities (LPP),with ≥0.95 indicating strong support and ≤0.75 indicating weak support.Scale bars under phylogenetic trees indicate the number of substitutions per site.Photos of N. bourbonica (Ny201) and N. vaga (Ny204) workers in profile view are to scale and were taken by Milan Janda.