Hanisch Priscila Elena, Lavinia Pablo D, Suarez Andrew V, Lijtmaer Darío Alejandro, Leponce Maurice, Paris Carolina Ivon, Tubaro Pablo Luis
Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia" MACN-CONICET Buenos Aires Argentina.
Department of Entomology and Department of Animal Biology University of Illinois Urbana USA.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Nov 10;7(23):10451-10466. doi: 10.1002/ece3.3549. eCollection 2017 Dec.
Understanding patterns of species diversity relies on accurate taxonomy which can only be achieved by long-term natural history research and the use of complementary information to establish species boundaries among cryptic taxa. We used DNA barcoding to characterize the ant diversity of Iguazú National Park (INP), a protected area of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest ecoregion, located at the southernmost extent of this forest. We assessed ant diversity using both cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) sequences and traditional morphological approaches, and compared the results of these two methods. We successfully obtained COI sequences for 312 specimens belonging to 124 species, providing a DNA barcode reference library for nearly 50% of the currently known ant fauna of INP. Our results support a clear barcode gap for all but two species, with a mean intraspecific divergence of 0.72%, and an average congeneric distance of 17.25%. Congruently, the library assembled here was useful for the discrimination of the ants of INP and allowed us to link unidentified males and queens to their worker castes. To detect overlooked diversity, we classified the DNA barcodes into Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) using three different clustering algorithms, and compared their number and composition to that of reference species identified based on morphology. The MOTU count was always higher than that of reference species regardless of the method, suggesting that the diversity of ants at INP could be between 6% and 10% higher than currently recognized. Lastly, our survey contributed with 78 new barcode clusters to the global DNA barcode reference library, and added 36 new records of ant species for the INP, being 23 of them new citations for Argentina.
了解物种多样性模式依赖于准确的分类学，而这只能通过长期的自然历史研究以及利用补充信息来确定隐秘类群之间的物种界限才能实现。我们利用DNA条形码技术对伊瓜苏国家公园（INP）的蚂蚁多样性进行了表征，该公园是上巴拉那大西洋森林生态区的一个保护区，位于这片森林的最南端。我们使用细胞色素c氧化酶亚基1（COI）序列和传统形态学方法评估了蚂蚁多样性，并比较了这两种方法的结果。我们成功获得了属于124个物种的312个标本的COI序列，为INP目前已知蚂蚁动物群的近50%提供了一个DNA条形码参考文库。我们的结果支持除两个物种外所有物种都有明显的条形码间隙，种内平均分歧率为0.72%，同属平均距离为17.25%。同样，在此组装的文库有助于区分INP的蚂蚁，并使我们能够将未识别的雄蚁和蚁后与其工蚁等级联系起来。为了检测被忽视的多样性，我们使用三种不同的聚类算法将DNA条形码分类为分子操作分类单元（MOTU），并将它们的数量和组成与基于形态学鉴定的参考物种进行比较。无论采用何种方法，MOTU数量总是高于参考物种数量，这表明INP的蚂蚁多样性可能比目前公认的高出6%至10%。最后，我们的调查为全球DNA条形码参考文库贡献了78个新的条形码聚类，并为INP增加了36个蚂蚁物种的新记录，其中23个是阿根廷的新记录。
