Edward O. Wilson’s research while affiliated with Harvard University and other places

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Publications (259)


Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian Myrmecia bulldog ants revealed by phylogenomics
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  • Full-text available

May 2023

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477 Reads

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16 Citations

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

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Philip S. Ward

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Studying the historical biogeography and life history transitions from eusocial colony life to social parasitism contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms generating biodiversity in eusocial insects. The ants in the genus Myrmecia are a well-suited system for testing evolutionary hypotheses about how their species diversity was assembled through time because the genus is endemic to Australia with the single exception of the species M. apicalis inhabiting the Pacific Island of New Caledonia, and because at least one social parasite species exists in the genus. However, the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the disjunct biogeographic distribution of M. apicalis and the life history transition(s) to social parasitism remain unexplored. To study the biogeographic origin of the isolated, oceanic species M. apicalis and to reveal the origin and evolution of social parasitism in the genus, we reconstructed a comprehensive phylogeny of the ant subfamily Myrmeciinae. We utilized Ultra Conserved Elements (UCEs) as molecular markers to generate a comprehensive molecular genetic dataset consisting of 2,287 loci per taxon on average for 66 out of the 93 known Myrmecia species as well as for the sister lineage Nothomyrmecia macrops and selected outgroups. Our time-calibrated phylogeny inferred that: (i) stem Myrmeciinae originated during the Paleocene ∼58 Ma ago; (ii) the current disjunct biogeographic distribution of M. apicalis was driven by long-distance dispersal from Australia to New Caledonia during the Miocene ∼14 Ma ago; (iii) the single social parasite species, M. inquilina, evolved directly from one of the two known host species, M. nigriceps, in sympatry via the intraspecific route of social parasite evolution; and (iv) 5 of the 9 previously established taxonomic species groups are non-monophyletic. We suggest minor changes to reconcile the molecular phylogenetic results with the taxonomic classification. Our study enhances our understanding of the evolution and biogeography of Australian bulldog ants, contributes to our knowledge about the evolution of social parasitism in ants, and provides a solid phylogenetic foundation for future inquiries into the biology, taxonomy, and classification of Myrmeciinae.

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NEW WORLD ANTS OF GRENADA COLLECTED IN PRESENT STUDY, LISTED BY DESCENDING NUMBER OF NEW SITE RECORDS.
ANT SPECIES RICHNESS OF GRENADA AND THE NEIGHBORING ISLANDS OF BARBADOS (WETTERER ET AL., 2016) AND ST. VINCENT (WETTERER, IN PREP.). ELEV. ¼ MAXIMUM ELEVATION. NW ¼ NEW WORLD SPECIES, OW¼ OLD WORLD SPECIES.
Ants of Grenada (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

June 2019

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1,313 Reads

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5 Citations

Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology

On West Indian islands, as elsewhere in the world, ants are a very important component of virtually every terrestrial ecosystem. Nonetheless, the ants of most West Indian islands have remained largely unknown and unstudied. Now several destructive exotic ant species are spreading through the region threatening native biodiversity. Here, we have compiled published and unpublished ant records and collected new specimens to document the diversity of ants on the island of Grenada. Our investigations increased the list of ant taxa known from the island of Grenada to 82 (65 New World and 17 Old World species). Of these, 71 species are represented among specimens we collected, while 11 are New World species known from Grenada based solely on earlier records. Some species recorded earlier, including at least nine not seen for more than 100 years, may now be extinct on Grenada. Grenada has more New World ant species than are known for Barbados (46), a neighboring island that has 34% more land area. Factors that may contribute to this difference include: 1) during low sea levels 15 kya, Grenada was part of a larger island about ten times Grenada’s current size, 2) Grenada is more mountainous than Barbados, and 3) Grenada has more remaining forest cover than Barbados (50.0% vs. 14.7%). Conversely, Grenada has fewer Old World ant species than are known for Barbados (24). Factors that may contribute to this difference include: 1) lower human population density, 2) lower levels of imported lumber products, and 3) lower tourism levels. Records for only four of the 17 Old World exotic ants found in Grenada date to before 1995. Major tramp ant species that are known from the West Indies, but have not yet been recorded from Grenada include Old World species, such as the pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis), the African big-headed ant (Pheidole megacephala), and the difficult white-footed ant (Technomyrmex difficilis), as well as the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta).






The general form of Hamilton's rule makes no predictions and cannot be tested empirically

May 2017

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242 Reads

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61 Citations

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Hamilton’s rule is a well-known concept in evolutionary biology. It is usually perceived as a statement that makes predictions about natural selection in situations where interactions occur between genetic relatives. Here, we examine what has been called the “exact and general” formulation of Hamilton’s rule. We show that in this formulation, which is widely endorsed by proponents of inclusive fitness theory, Hamilton’s rule does not make any prediction and cannot be tested empirically. This formulation of Hamilton’s rule is not a consequence of natural selection and not even a statement specifically about biology. We give simple and transparent expressions for the quantities of benefit, cost, and relatedness that appear in Hamilton’s rule, which reveal that these quantities depend on the data that are to be predicted.


TABLE 2 . OLD WORLD ANTS OF BARBADOS. 
TABLE 3 . ANT SPECIES RICHNESS OF BARBADOS AND 
Ants of Barbados (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

May 2016

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1,589 Reads

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15 Citations

Breviora

The Caribbean region is considered a threatened biodiversity hotspot because of its high levels of biotic endemism and widespread habitat destruction. On Caribbean islands, as elsewhere in the world, ants are a critical component of virtually every terrestrial ecosystem. Nonetheless, the ants of most Caribbean islands remain poorly known. Here, we reviewed historical accounts, compiled published and unpublished ant records, and collected new specimens to document the diversity of ants on the Caribbean island of Barbados, including summary accounts for each species. We expected Barbados to have a relatively depauperate native ant fauna with few endemic species because of high isolation, young age, flat terrain, and high degree of habitat destruction. Furthermore, we expected to find many exotic ants, introduced throughout a long history of international commerce dating back to the 1600s. Our investigations increased the list of ant taxa known from Barbados to 69 (46 New World and 23 Old World). Of these, 62 are represented among specimens we collected, and seven are New World species only known from earlier records. We found that Barbados has fewer New World ant species and more Old World ant species than are known for Grenada and St. Vincent, two neighboring Caribbean islands of similar size. Most of the New World ant species in Barbados are continuously distributed from South American and Trinidad, through the Lesser Antilles and are probably native (i.e., predating human arrival). Some New World species in Barbados, however, may be exotics introduced through human commerce, as are all Old World ant species present. Six previously recorded New World species that we did not find may now be extinct in Barbados. These include Atta cephalotes lutea and Crematogaster brevidentata, the only two ant taxa thought to be endemic to Barbados, each collected just once >110 years ago.



Citations (47)


... We conducted a symmetry test for the assumptions of stationarity and homogeneity of the UCE loci (Hanisch et al., 2022;Mera-Rodríguez et al., 2023;Naser-Khdour et al., 2019) using IQ-TREE v.2.1.2 (Minh et al., 2020). ...

Reference:

Phylogenomic approach to integrative taxonomy resolves a century‐old taxonomic puzzle and the evolutionary history of the Acromyrmex octospinosus species complex
Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian Myrmecia bulldog ants revealed by phylogenomics

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

... Consequently, it seems reasonable that CHCs play a major role for leafcutter ants which have lived for more than 50 million years in a very special symbiosis with mutualistic fungi of the family Lepiotaceae (Chapela et al., 1994;Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990;Wetterer, 1999). These ants collect leaves from many different plants and transport them into their nest to cultivate the fungi on it (Garrett et al., 2016;Hölldobler & Wilson, 2011). Furthermore, they establish constant and optimal living conditions for the fungi in their nest. ...

Blattschneiderameisen – der perfekte Superorganismus
  • Citing Book
  • January 2011

... Deyrup (2016) collected S. subcoeca at one site in South Florida, the first published record of S. subcoeca from outside the West Indies. Wetterer et al. (2019) reported the first records of S. subcoeca from Grenada. Here, we present new descriptions of the worker and queen castes, and document a greatly expanded known geographic distribution of S. subcoeca in both the New World and the Old World. ...

Ants of Grenada (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology

... Las afectaciones de una infraestructura de tal escala, así como los caminos y luces, degrada o elimina la vegetación inmediata, la fauna del lugar se ve afectada de manera directa o por la consecuente fragmentación o pérdida total de su hábitat, dejando a los individuos sobrevivientes en condiciones de vulnerabilidad, reduce la conectividad entre hábitats, erosiona el suelo, afecta los regímenes naturales del fuego y altera los procesos hidrológicos del territorio de manera más evidente a través de inundaciones (Peters, Ripple, Wolf, Moskwik, & Carreón Arroyo, 2018). ...

Nature Divided, Scientists United: US–Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity and Binational Conservation

BioScience

... New fencing would likely be exempted from all environmental laws and considerations due to authorizations provided to the USA Department of Homeland Security under the Real ID Act of 2005. The ocelot is one of many species that would be adversely affected by additional fence construction (Peters et al., 2018), and the fence and associated lights, roads, vehicles, and human presence have the potential to sever currently viable ocelot movement corridors across the border, perhaps precluding natural recolonization of suitable habitats in the USA. ...

Nature Divided, Scientists United: US–Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity and Binational Conservation

BioScience

... Interestingly, the predominant overlap of families and genera of oribatid mites with the northwestern group indicates that endemic oribatid mite species of New Guinea predominantly split off from Laurasian ancestors. This reflects that, although the dispersal of soil oribatid mites is limited, they effectively colonised New Guinea from the west (Balke et al. 2009;Matos-Maraví et al. 2018), presumably mainly via passive dispersal by wind (i.e., air currents, such as the Southeast Asian monsoon) (Lehmitz et al. 2011), birds (Krivolutsky and Lebedeva 2004), ocean currents (Wyrtki 1961;Gordon and Fine 1996;Pfingstl 2013;Schuppenhauer et al. 2019), rafting debris (Lindo 2020), attached to fish bodies (Olmeda et al. 2011), but possibly also by (ancient) humans migrating from the west to the east (Walter and Proctor 1999;Cooper and Stringer 2013;Denham 2017). Thereby, contrasting mammals, amphibians and freshwater fish, they effectively bridged Wallace's line, Lydekker's line and Weber's line, with their colonisation most closely resembling that of birds, that is, Holt's line. ...

An ant genus-group ( Prenolepis ) illuminates the biogeography and drivers of insect diversification in the Indo-Pacific
  • Citing Article
  • February 2018

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

... This study is yet another example, among many now available in the global scientific literature, of how environments increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities risk erasing the traces of species whose identity and functions within the ecosystem are still unknown (Wilson 2017). Parasitoids are key organisms in the functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems, and we cannot predict the impact of their extinction or population reduction if we do not even know how many species exist. ...

Biodiversity research requires more boots on the ground
  • Citing Article
  • October 2017

Nature Ecology & Evolution

... The Einstein-Hilbert action, though foundational, was an educated "guess," deeply rooted in symmetry and simplicity [Feynman, 1995]. However, its ambiguity raises challenges, as the action itself cannot be directly obtained and is justified only postfactum through experimentally verifiable motion equations [Feynmann, 1995;Nowak et al., 2017]. The limits of general relativity have again come into focus with the emergence of the "dark universe" scenario, which leads to speculation that general relativity may not be the correct theory of gravity to describe the Universe on the largest scales ]. ...

The general form of Hamilton's rule makes no predictions and cannot be tested empirically
  • Citing Article
  • May 2017

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

... Simultaneously, cultural practices shape the selective environments in which LHS traits evolve, as norms favoring prosociality and cooperation in stable settings reinforce slower LHS traits, while competitive or high-risk cultural environments amplify the fitness advantages of faster LHS. This dynamic feedback loop between genetic predispositions, cultural adaptations, and environmental pressures illustrates how LHS integrates into the broader framework of gene-culture coevolution, driving the emergence and persistence of cultural behaviors (see, for further reading, Hertler et al., 2020;Lumsden & Wilson, 1981). ...

Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process
  • Citing Book
  • August 2005

... These two genera rarely share a home range on islands. Surveys of islands such as Cocos Island [50], Barbados [51], Tobago (see [51]), and almost all the Greater Antilles record the presence [52], and sometimes the abundance of Odontomachus, and the total absence of Neoponera. Though both are reported to occur in Puerto Rico [53,54], this report was later put in doubt [50,51,55]. ...

Ants of Barbados (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

Breviora