Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian Myrmecia bulldog ants revealed by phylogenomics

Studying the historical biogeography and life history transitions from eusocial colony life to social parasitism contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms generating biodiversity in eusocial insects. The bulldog ants in the genus Myrmecia are a well-suited system for testing competing evolutionary hypotheses about how their species diversity was assembled through time because the genus is endemic to Australia with the single exception of the species Myrmecia apicalis inhabiting the Pacific Island of New Caledonia and because at least one social parasite species exists in the genus. However, the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the disjunct biogeographic distribution of M. apicalis and the life history transition(s) to social parasitism remain unexplored. To study the biogeographic origin of the isolated, oceanic species M. apicalis and to reveal the origin and evolutionary history of social parasitism in the genus, we reconstructed a comprehensive phylogeny of th..., Molecular data generation
We used Ultra Conserved Elements (UCEs) as molecular markers. UCEs have been widely used as a reliable source for inferring molecular phylogenies in several taxa including ants (Barrera et al. 2022; Borowiec et al. 2021; Branstetter et al. 2017; Camacho et al. 2022; Faircloth et al. 2015; Hanisch et al. 2022; van Elst et al. 2021; Zhang et al. 2019). UCEs can be extracted from museum vouchers that are old and/or have not been preserved in optimal conditions (Blaimer et al. 2016; Borowiec et al. 2021), which was the case for most of our samples.
Ant DNA was extracted using the Qiagen DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit (Qiagen, GmbH) following the manufacturer’s protocol. We extracted DNA from the three right legs of the ants when the specimens were longer than 15 mm. When the ants were smaller, we extracted DNA non-destructively without removing any appendages. After the DNA extractions, the specimens were re-mounted and preserved as vouchers in their corresponding bio..., , # Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian *Myrmecia* bulldog ants revealed by phylogenomics

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfkp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfkp)

#### UCE contigs 

Contigs assembled in SPAdes.

#### How to download the data

Download the zip folder with the compressed file. Then, upload this file to your cluster and decompress it. You will get all the contigs listed in fasta format.

#### How to use it

Use the contigs if you are interested in reproducing our study or if you want to add these sequences to your phylogenetic project.

#### Suggested citation

Mera-Rodríguez, D. 2022. Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian *Myrmecia* bulldog ants revealed by a phylogenomic reconstruction, Dryad, Dataset, [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfkp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfkp)