Myrmecol. News 12: 201-210; printable
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.25849/myrmecol.news_012:201
- Open Access: CC BY 4.0
- Year: 2009
- Title: Inferring ant evolution in the age of molecular data (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
- Journal: Myrmecological News
- Volume: 12
- Pages: 201-210
- Type of contribution: Review Article
- Supplementary material: No
- Abstract: Molecular data have revolutionized our understanding of ant evolution and systematics by making available large quantities of data and providing an independent character set to infer phylogenetic relationships. Although the first ant phylogeny from molecular sequence data was published less than 15 years ago, the field has grown rapidly with implications for all levels of ant biology. Not only has molecular data helped resolve the phylogenetic relationships of many ant groups, but with well-resolved phylogenies inferences about the evolution of morphology, ages of clades, diversification, associations with mutualists, behavior, development, and other areas of research in ant biology have benefited from this active avenue of research. Questions of speciation, population genetics, phylogeography, systematics, biogeography, and many other active lines of ant research are now routinely addressed with molecular data. With the ease of generating large amounts of sequence data increasing and costs decreasing the next frontier in myrmecology will be to insure that future ant biologists are able to take advantage of this important tool while still being trained in basic ant biology and taxonomy.
- Key words: Formicidae, molecular systematics, phylogeny, phylogeography, DNA, diversification, ants, review.
- Publisher: The Austrian Society of Entomofaunistics
- ISSN: Print: 1994-4136 - Online: 1997-3500