Rakotonirina Jean Claude, Csősz Sándor, Fisher Brian L
Madagascar Biodiversity Center, BP 6257, Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
Entomology, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118, U.S.A.
Zookeys. 2016 Mar 15(572):81-154. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.572.7177. eCollection 2016.
The Malagasy species group is revised based on both qualitative morphological traits and multivariate analysis of continuous morphometric data. To minimize the effect of the scaling properties of diverse traits due to worker caste polymorphism, and to achieve the desired near-linearity of data, morphometric analyses were done only on minor workers. The majority of traits exhibit broken scaling on head size, dividing workers into two discrete subcastes, minors and majors. This broken scaling prevents the application of algorithms that uses linear combination of data to the entire dataset, hence only minor workers were analyzed statistically. The elimination of major workers resulted in linearity and the data meet required assumptions. However, morphometric ratios for the subsets of minor and major workers were used in species descriptions and redefinitions. Prior species hypotheses and the goodness of clusters were tested on raw data by confirmatory linear discriminant analysis. Due to the small sample size available for some species, a factor known to reduce statistical reliability, hypotheses generated by exploratory analyses were tested with extreme care and species delimitations were inferred via the combined evidence of both qualitative (morphology and biology) and quantitative data. Altogether, fifteen species are recognized, of which 11 are new to science: , , , , , , , , , , and Four species are redescribed: Forel, André, Forel, and Roger. Forel, is synonymized under . This revision also includes an identification key to species for both minor and major castes, information on geographic distribution and biology, taxonomic discussions, and descriptions of intraspecific variation. Traditional taxonomy and multivariate morphometric analysis are independent sources of information which, in combination, allow more precise species delimitation. Moreover, quantitative characters included in identification keys improve accuracy of determination in difficult cases.
马达加斯加物种组是根据定性形态特征和连续形态测量数据的多变量分析进行修订的。为了尽量减少由于工蚁等级多态性导致的不同性状缩放特性的影响，并实现数据所需的近似线性，形态测量分析仅针对小型工蚁进行。大多数性状在头部大小上呈现出断裂缩放，将工蚁分为两个离散的亚等级，即小型工蚁和大型工蚁。这种断裂缩放阻碍了将使用数据线性组合的算法应用于整个数据集，因此仅对小型工蚁进行了统计分析。去除大型工蚁后实现了线性，并且数据符合所需假设。然而，小型和大型工蚁子集的形态测量比率被用于物种描述和重新定义。通过验证性线性判别分析对原始数据检验了先前的物种假设和聚类的优良性。由于一些物种可用的样本量较小，这是一个已知会降低统计可靠性的因素，因此对探索性分析产生的假设进行了极为谨慎的检验，并通过定性（形态学和生物学）和定量数据的综合证据推断物种界定。总共识别出15个物种，其中11个是科学上新发现的：[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称] [此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]、[此处原文缺失新物种具体名称] 和 [此处原文缺失新物种具体名称]。重新描述了4个物种：[此处原文缺失物种具体名称] Forel、[此处原文缺失物种具体名称] André、[此处原文缺失物种具体名称] Forel和[此处原文缺失物种具体名称] Roger。[此处原文缺失物种具体名称] Forel被同义化为[此处原文缺失物种具体名称]。这次修订还包括小型和大型等级的物种鉴定检索表、地理分布和生物学信息、分类学讨论以及种内变异描述。传统分类学和多变量形态测量分析是独立的信息来源，两者结合可实现更精确的物种界定。此外，鉴定检索表中包含的定量特征提高了在困难情况下鉴定的准确性。
