Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Apr 3;280(1759):20130495.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0495. Print 2013 May 22.

Ancient host shifts followed by host conservatism in a group of ant parasitoids

Elizabeth A Murray  1 , Andrew E Carmichael, John M Heraty
Affiliations

Ancient host shifts followed by host conservatism in a group of ant parasitoids

Elizabeth A Murray et al. Proc Biol Sci. .

Abstract

While ant colonies serve as host to a diverse array of myrmecophiles, few parasitoids are able to exploit this vast resource. A notable exception is the wasp family Eucharitidae, which is the only family of insects known to exclusively parasitize ants. Worldwide, approximately 700 Eucharitidae species attack five subfamilies across the ant phylogeny. Our goal is to uncover the pattern of eucharitid diversification, including timing of key evolutionary events, biogeographic patterns and potential cophylogeny with ant hosts. We present the most comprehensive molecular phylogeny of Eucharitidae to date, including 44 of the 53 genera and fossil-calibrated estimates of divergence dates. Eucharitidae arose approximately 50 Ma after their hosts, during the time when the major ant lineages were already established and diversifying. We incorporate host association data to test for congruence between eucharitid and ant phylogenies and find that their evolutionary histories are more similar than expected at random. After a series of initial host shifts, clades within Eucharitidae maintained their host affinity. Even after multiple dispersal events to the New World and extensive speciation within biogeographic regions, eucharitids remain parasitic on the same ant subfamilies as their Old World relatives, suggesting host conservatism despite access to a diverse novel ant fauna.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Fossil-calibrated phylogeny of Eucharitidae. Two hundred and thirty-seven taxa were analysed. Terminal labels, posterior probabilities and error range of node ages found in the electronic supplementary material, figure S1. Blue star signifies eucharitid origin (stem node). Green shading on left indicates the major period of ant diversification, which coincides with the origin of their eucharitid parasitoids. ‘F’ symbols indicate the three fossil constraints, and ‘NW’ indicates that the subtending clade members are found in the New World, whereas ancestral eucharitids are Old World. Bars to the right indicate ant hosts and biogeography, with the specific ant-subfamily host indicated by abbreviation at tree terminals: E, Ectatomminae; F, Formicinae; Me, Myrmeciinae; M, Myrmicinae; P, Ponerinae. Ant image (adapted from [11]). (b) Portion of tree showing age and relationships of the paraphyletic Perilampidae relative to Eucharitidae. (c) Ages of major eucharitid groups and their respective ant host subfamilies (crown ant age from Schmidt [39], remaining from Brady et al. [38]).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Host–parasitoid taxonomic associations. Tanglegram simplified from analysis of 29 eucharitid genera and 23 formicid genera. Ant cladogram on left (adapted from Moreau et al. [37]). Thin interaction lines indicate utilization of just one host genus, thick lines indicate multiple hosts. Psilocharitini and the formicine parasitoid groups are non-monophyletic. Estimated node age ranges above branches, as in figure 1c.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Ancestral state reconstruction. Forty-eight terminal taxa in analysis, with each genus of ant host represented by a parasitoid taxon (see the electronic supplementary material, table S1). Dashed line indicates the record was included for illustrative purposes (taxon not in data matrix). Pie charts at selected nodes display proportional probability under Bayesian inference. Coloured branches show parsimony reconstruction. Terminals labelled by eucharitid genus, with ant genera in parenthesis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Brooks DR. 1985. Historical ecology: a new approach to studying the evolution of ecological associations. Ann. Mo. Botanical Garden 72, 660–68010.2307/2399219 (doi:10.2307/2399219) - DOI - DOI
    1. Klassen GJ. 1992. Coevolution: a history of the macroevolutionary approach to studying host-parasite associations. J. Parasitol. 78, 573–58710.2307/3283532 (doi:10.2307/3283532) - DOI - DOI - PubMed
    1. Poulin R. 1997. Species richness of parasite assemblages: evolution and patterns. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 28, 341–35810.1146/annurev.ecolsys.28.1.341 (doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.28.1.341) - DOI - DOI
    1. Darwin C. 1859. On the origin of species. A facsimile of the first edition, 513 p. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
    1. Shaw SR. 1988. Euphorine phylogeny: the evolution of diversity in host-utilization by parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Ecol. Entomol. 13, 323–33510.1111/j.1365-2311.1988.tb00363.x (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2311.1988.tb00363.x) - DOI - DOI

Publication types

Substances

Associated data