@ARTICLE{TreeBASE2Ref18050, author = {Philip S. Ward and Se?n G. Brady}, title = {Phylogeny and biogeography of the ant subfamily Myrmeciinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae).}, year = {2003}, keywords = {}, doi = {10.1071/IS02046}, url = {}, pmid = {}, journal = {Invertebrate Systematics}, volume = {17}, number = {3}, pages = {361--389}, abstract = {We investigated phylogenetic relationships among the ?primitive? Australian ant genera Myrmecia and Nothomyrmecia (stat. rev.) and the Baltic amber fossil genus Prionomyrmex, using a combination of morphological and molecular data. Outgroups for the analysis included representatives from a variety of potential sister groups, including five extant subfamilies of ants and one extinct group (Sphecomyrminae). Parsimony analysis of the morphological data provides strong support (~95% bootstrap proportions) for the monophyly of (1) genus Myrmecia, (2) genus Prionomyrmex, and (3) a clade containing those two genera plus Nothomyrmecia. A group comprising Nothomyrmecia and Prionomyrmex is also upheld (85% bootstrap support). Molecular sequence data (~2200 bp from the 18S and 28S rRNA genes) corroborate these findings for extant taxa, with Myrmecia and Nothomyrmecia appearing as sister groups with ~100% bootstrap support under parsimony, neighbor joining and maximum likelihood analyses. Neither the molecular nor the morphological data sets allow us to identify unambiguously the sister group of (Myrmecia + (Nothomyrmecia + Prionomyrmex)). Rather, Myrmecia and relatives are part of an unresolved polytomy that encompasses most of the ant subfamilies. Taken as a whole our results support the contention that many of the major lineages of ants?including a clade that later came to contain Myrmecia, Nothomyrmecia and Prionomyrmex?arose at approximately the same time during a bout of diversification in the middle or late Cretaceous. Based on Bayesian dating analysis the estimated age of the most recent common ancestor of Myrmecia and Nothomyrmecia is 74 Ma (95% confidence limits: 53-101 Ma), a result consistent with the origin of the myrmeciine stem lineage in the Cretaceous. The ant subfamily Myrmeciinae is redefined to contain two tribes, Myrmeciini (genus Myrmecia) and Prionomyrmecini (Nothomyrmecia and Prionomyrmex). Phylogenetic analysis of the enigmatic Argentine fossils Ameghinoia and Polanskiella demonstrates that they are also members of the Myrmeciinae, probably more closely related to Prionomyrmecini than to Myrmeciini. Thus, the myrmeciine ants appear to be a formerly widespread group, which retained many ancestral formicid characteristics, and which went extinct everywhere except in the Australian region.} }

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