Abstract.
Although molecular data have proven indispensable in confidently resolving the phylogeny of many clades across the tree of life, these data may be inaccessible for certain taxa. The resolution of taxonomy in the ant subfamily Leptanillinae is made problematic by the absence of DNA sequence data for leptanilline taxa that are known only from male specimens, including the monotypic genus Phaulomyrma Wheeler & Wheeler. Focusing upon the considerable diversity of undescribed male leptanilline morphospecies, the phylogeny of 35 putative morphospecies sampled from across the Leptanillinae, plus an outgroup, is inferred from 11 nuclear loci and 41 discrete male morphological characters using a Bayesian total-evidence framework, with Phaulomyrma represented by morphological data only. Based upon the results of this analysis Phaulomyrma is synonymized with Leptanilla Emery, and male-based diagnoses for Leptanilla that are grounded in phylogeny are provided, under both broad and narrow circumscriptions of that genus. This demonstrates the potential utility of a total-evidence approach in inferring the phylogeny of rare extant taxa for which molecular data are unavailable and begins a long-overdue systematic revision of the Leptanillinae that is focused on male material.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
3 terminals have been omitted from the main molecular dataset, and new sequences for Leptanilla revelierii obtained. Bayesian total-evidence analyses under both ad hoc and algorithmic partitioning schemes were performed using this modified alignment (9,351 bp), while a Bayesian total-evidence analysis under an algorithmic partitioning scheme was also implemented using only those terminals for which data was heretofore published in Ward & Sumnicht (2012) and/or Borowiec et al. (2019); this latter alignment was 9,062 bp long. Finally, Bayesian phylogenetic analyses were performed for the 9,351-bp dataset and morphological dataset alone, respectively. Figs. 2, 4 and 10 are entirely new. The Supplemental Material of the previous version, which described delimitation of the 41 discrete morphological characters, has now been merged into the main manuscript as an Appendix, and the associated figures incorporated.