Nylanderia guatemalensis (LaPolla and Kallal, 2019)

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 guatemalensis Complex

The guatemalensis complex, thought to be comprised of N. guatemalensis and N. steinheili , is nonmonophyletic in the global ML phylogeny ( Fig. 2 ). A strongly supported clade including N. guatemalensis and as many as eight morphospecies from South America (N. spp. FG02, FG07, FG03, Ven4, Col2, Per3, Bra1, and FG01) is more closely related to the fulva complex than to N. steinheili . A clade comprised of N. steinheili and three morphospecies native/endemic to parts of the Caribbean ( N. coveri , N. myops , and N. JKW1) is more distantly related to the rest of the guatemalensis complex.

In contrast, the unphased ( Fig. 4A ) and phased ( Fig. 4B ) MSC phylogenies both provide strong support for the monophyly of the guatemalensis complex, with N. guatemalensis most closely related to South American species. Nylanderia steinheili is strongly supported as belonging to a clade with two Caribbean morphospecies ( N. coveri and N. sp. JKW1). Collectively, the guatemalensis complex is strongly supported as sister to the fulva complex. Across all analyses, N. guatemalensis and N. steinheili are strongly supported as independent, monophyletic species that are not sister taxa.

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. 4. Multi-species coalescent phylogenies of the guatemalensis and fulva complexes, 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 number of substitutions per site. Photos of N. guatemalensis (Ny097), N. steinheili (Ny101), and N. fulva (Ny191) workers in profile view are to scale and were taken by Brandon Mai.