A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche

Caspar Schöning,Jacobus J Boomsma,Lars B Vilhelmsen,Daniel Jc Kronauer

doi:10.1186/1471-2148-7-56

Abstract

BackgroundArmy ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Five of the six recognized subgenera of Old World Dorylus army ants forage in the soil, whereas some species of the sixth subgenus (Anomma) forage in the leaf-litter and some as conspicuous swarm raiders on the forest floor and in the lower vegetation (the infamous driver ants). Here we use a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences to reconstruct the phylogeny of the Dorylus s.l. army ants and to infer the evolutionary transitions in foraging niche and associated morphological adaptations.ResultsUnderground foraging is basal and gave rise to leaf-litter foraging. Leaf-litter foraging in turn gave rise to two derived conditions: true surface foraging (the driver ants) and a reversal to subterranean foraging (a clade with most of the extant Dorylus s.s. species). This means that neither the subgenus Anomma nor Dorylus s.s. is monophyletic, and that one of the Dorylus s.s. lineages adopted subterranean foraging secondarily. We show that this latter group evolved a series of morphological adaptations to underground foraging that are remarkably convergent to the basal state.ConclusionThe evolutionary transitions in foraging niche were more complex than previously thought, but our comparative analysis of worker morphology lends strong support to the contention that particular foraging niches have selected for very specific worker morphologies. The surprising reversal to underground foraging is therefore a striking example of convergent morphological evolution.

Highlights

Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style
Leaf-litter foraging in turn gave rise to two derived conditions: true surface foraging and a reversal to subterranean foraging
This means that neither the subgenus Anomma nor Dorylus s.s. is monophyletic, and that one of the Dorylus s.s. lineages adopted subterranean foraging secondarily. We show that this latter group evolved a series of morphological adaptations to underground foraging that are remarkably convergent to the basal state

Summary

Introduction

Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Some species conduct spectacular swarm raids, in which hundreds of thousands of ants form a dense carpet that sweeps through areas of 1000 m2 or more on a single day in search of prey This remarkable foraging behaviour is found in (page number not for citation purposes). With the subsequent break-up of this supercontinent, the clade split into the New World army ants (subfamily Ecitoninae) and the Old World army ants The latter comprises three monophyletic subfamilies, the Dorylinae (with a primarily Afrotropical distribution), the Aenictinae (primarily distributed in Asia and the Oriental region with fewer African species), and the enigmatic subfamily Aenictogitoninae, which is only known from nocturnal males that have been sporadically collected at lights in sub-Saharan Africa, and which has been inferred to be the sister taxon to the Dorylinae [2,4,5]. Whether the Aenictogitoninae have all the defining army ant traits will not be known until colonies with workers and queens have been discovered

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