Unraveling hidden patterns: exploring the diversity and phylogenetic endemism of Atlantic Forest ants through genomic data

• Grant number: 23/12809-0
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Taxonomy of Recent Groups
• Principal Investigator: Gabriela Procópio Camacho
• Grantee: Gabriela Procópio Camacho
• Host Institution: Museu de Zoologia (MZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Ana Carolina Loss Rodrigues ; Bonnie Blaimer ; Carlos Roberto Ferreira Brandão ; Heraldo Luis de Vasconcelos ; Joyce Rodrigues Do Prado ; Karen Christina Ferreira Neves ; Lívia Pires do Prado ; Mônica Antunes Ulysséa ; Otávio Guilherme Morais da Silva ; Rodrigo dos Santos Machado Feitosa ; Rogério Rosa da Silva ; Sebastian Salata ; Theodore Robert Schultz ; Yeffrey Sosa Calvo

Abstract

Understanding species distribution, mapping biodiversity patterns and comparing them with environmental conditions are crucial steps for planning conservation strategies, especially in megadiverse but highly threatened tropical areas such as the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Additionally, by considering how patterns of alpha diversity and phylogenetic diversity are represented in geographic space, it is also possible to understand how anthropogenic changes in habitat affect biodiversity measures in an evolutionary context. Phylogenetic diversity is especially important for conservation when it is spatially restricted, indicating a geographic concentration of evolutionarily unique biodiversity. Measuring phylogenetic endemism at phylogeographic scales also provides more robust estimates when taxonomy is in flux. Being an ecologically dominant group in any ecosystem on Earth, ants maintain interactions with many other organisms and, consequently, are fundamental in the functional processes of these ecosystems. Using new phylogenomic tools and an ecological dataset for ants based on the ant collection at the Museu de Zoologia at the Universidade de São Paulo, the largest collection of neotropical ants in the world, this proposal will form a broad comparison of the spatial patterns of phylogenetic diversity of ants from this tropical hotspot, given its current state of fragmentation, to answer the following questions: 1. What are the patterns of diversity and phylogenetic endemism of Neotropical ants in the Atlantic Forest and how does it compare to other tropical biomes? 2. What are the potential drivers of community assembly and endemism in this region? 3. What is the regional distribution of ant communities and how are they affected by environmental factors? Results include the generation of a genomic data set for 1000 species of ants from the Atlantic Forest and the construction of ecological niche models for species that occur in the region, which will allow us to understand the patterns of diversity and phylogenetic endemism of ants from the Atlantic Forest, as well as identifying centers of endemism and the zooregionalization of the biome with a focus on ants. Another long-term goal of this project is to develop biological collections as model systems to understand the universal processes and mechanisms responsible for shaping distribution patterns and community structure in arthropods. (AU)