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Genetic Diversity of Urban Camponotus Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Ants Revealed by Capture of Alates and DNA Sequencing

  • Ecology, Behavior and Bionomics
  • Published:
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Abstract

The Camponotus Mayr genus of carpenter ants is one of the largest in species number and widely represented in the Neotropical Region. Most species are generalists and capable of exploiting diverse habitats including urban environments. Urban green areas can act as a repository of regional biodiversity, thus we investigated whether this is valid for the largest city in South America. We compared the richness of Camponotus spp. in two green areas in regions with distinct urbanization profiles and also with previous surveys made in smaller cities and in natural areas of the original Atlantic Forest. Besides the usual capture of worker specimens, we included capture of alates to improve the species richness sampling. Morphological identification of Camponotus spp. is challenging, even more when alates are included. To assist in specimen identification, we performed DNA sequencing of mitochondrial and nuclear markers. The richness observed in the less stressed urban area was higher than in the more stressed one. Camponotus spp. reported in natural areas are largely represented in the urban area. DNA sequencing for specimen identification is hampered by the lack of corresponding sequences in the GenBank, but it helped to associate workers and alates of the same species and indicated the existence of cryptic species in the genus. Capture of alates allowed detection of several species for which workers were not sampled; therefore, it is a valuable tool for surveying diversity of Camponotus or other ant taxa with arboreal or hypogeic habits.

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Acknowledgements

We thank MSc Thiago Ranzani Silva and Rodolfo Probst for helping in specimen comparisons at MZUSP. We thank Dr. Jacques H. C. Delabie for examination of some specimens. We also thank CNPq for the scholarship granted to A.A. Oliveira.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Biológico, Av. Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves, 1252, São Paulo, SP, CEP 04014-002, Brazil

    A A Oliveira, A E C Campos & R Harakava

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  1. A A Oliveira
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  2. A E C Campos
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  3. R Harakava
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to R Harakava.

Additional information

Edited by Fernando B Noll – UNESP

Electronic supplementary material

Table S1

(DOCX 24 kb)

Fig S1

Satellite view of the city of São Paulo, showing the study areas Instituto Biológico (IB) and Horto Florestal (HF), located in regions with distinct urbanization profiles. (GIF 1156 kb)

High Resolution (TIFF 2163 kb)

Fig S2

Map of Brazil and of municipalities of the State of São Paulo showing points where specimens were collected. 1 – Curitiba (Paraná State - PR), 2 – Andradas (Minas Gerais State - MG), 3 – Uberlândia (Minas Gerais State - MG), 4 – Fortaleza (Ceará State - CE), 5 – Campo Limpo (CP - São Paulo City), 6 – Instituto Biológico (IB - São Paulo City), 7 – Instituto Federal (IF - São Paulo City), 8 – Horto Florestal (HF – São Paulo City), 9 – Santo André (São Paulo State – SP), 10 – Guarulhos (São Paulo State - SP), 11 – Nazaré Paulista (São Paulo State- SP), 12 – Sorocaba (São Paulo State - SP), 13 – Bragança Paulista (São Paulo State - SP), 14 – Campinas (São Paulo State - SP), 15 – Rio Claro (São Paulo State - SP). (GIF 811 kb)

High Resolution (TIFF 923 kb)

Fig S3

Species delimitation according to Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (Puillandre et al 2012). (JPEG 2805 kb)

Fig S4

Species delimitation according to Poisson Tree Processes (Zhang et al 2013). (JPEG 477 kb)

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Oliveira, A.A., Campos, A.E.C. & Harakava, R. Genetic Diversity of Urban Camponotus Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Ants Revealed by Capture of Alates and DNA Sequencing. Neotrop Entomol 46, 499–506 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-017-0489-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-017-0489-z

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