Insights into the evolution, biogeography and natural history of the acorn ants, genus Temnothorax Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Background: Temnothorax (Formicidae: Myrmicinae) is a diverse genus of ants found in a broad spectrum of ecosystems across the northern hemisphere. These diminutive ants have long served as models for social insect behavior, leading to discoveries about social learning and inspiring hypotheses about the process of speciation and the evolution of social parasitism. This genus is highly morphologically and behaviorally diverse, and this has caused a great deal of taxonomic confusion in recent years. Past efforts to estimate the phylogeny of this genus have been limited in taxonomic scope, leaving the broader evolutionary patterns in Temnothorax unclear. To establish the monophyly of Temnothorax, resolve the evolutionary relationships, and investigate trends in the evolution of key traits, I generated, assembled, and analyzed two molecular datasets: a traditional multi-locus Sanger sequencing dataset, and an ultra-conserved element (UCE) dataset. Using maximum likelihood, Bayesian and
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研究背景：切叶蚁属（Temnothorax）隶属于蚁科（Formicidae）切叶蚁亚科（Myrmicinae），是一个物种丰富的蚂蚁类群，广泛分布于北半球各类生态系统中。这类体型微小的蚂蚁长期以来作为社会昆虫行为学研究的模式类群，推动了社会学习相关研究的重要发现，并为物种形成过程与社会寄生演化的相关假说提供了灵感。该属在形态学与行为学上均具有极高的多样性，这使得近年来该类群的分类学研究产生了大量混淆与争议。过往针对该属系统发育的研究受限于类群采样范围，导致切叶蚁属整体的演化模式仍不明确。为明确切叶蚁属的单系性、厘清其演化亲缘关系，并探究关键性状的演化趋势，本研究构建并分析了两类分子数据集：传统的多位点Sanger测序数据集，以及超保守元件（ultra-conserved element, UCE）数据集。本研究采用最大似然法、贝叶斯法及sum...