Ants of the Hengduan Mountains: a new altitudinal survey and updated checklist for Yunnan Province highlight an understudied insect biodiversity hotspot

Abstract

China’s Hengduan Mountain region has been considered one of the most diverse regions in the northern hemisphere. Its stunning topography with many deep valleys and impassable mountain barriers has promoted an astonishing diversification in many groups of organisms including plants, birds, mammals, and amphibians. However, the insect biodiversity in this region is still poorly known. Here, the first checklist of ant species from the Southern Hengduan Mountain region is presented, generated by sampling ant diversity using a wide array of collection methods, including Winkler leaf litter extraction, vegetation beating, and hand collection. 130 species/morphospecies from nine subfamilies and 49 genera were identified. Among them, 17 species from 13 genera represent new records for Yunnan province, and eight species are newly recorded for China. Moreover, we believe 41 novel morphospecies (31% of the total collected taxa) will prove to be new to science. These results highlight the rich ant fauna of this region and strongly support its status as a biodiversity hotspot. The current ant species checklist for the whole of Yunnan Province was updated by recording 550 named species from 99 genera. Taken together, our results suggest that the Yunnan ant fauna still remains under-sampled, and future sampling will likely yield many more species, among them many undescribed ones.

Fine‐scale genome‐wide signature of Pleistocene glaciation in Thitarodes moths (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae), host of Ophiocordyceps fungus in the Hengduan Mountains

“…In explaining the extraordinary Rhododendron diversity of the region (more than 50% of the world's existing species), Irving and Hebda (1993) postulated that species inhabiting a deep valley diverged in response to recurrent glacial‐interglacial climate changes. While insect diversity in the region is largely understudied (Ji et al, 2013; Liu et al, 2020), recent studies on the distribution of plants and vertebrates confirmed the presence of a Pleistocene glacial barrier and refugia across the entire range of Hengduan‐Himalaya (Meng et al, 2015; Qiu et al, 2011; Wan et al, 2021). Most studies of biodiversity in the region have addressed the process of interspecies divergence, while the "missing link" lies in explaining the accumulation of intraspecific genetic diversity across the mountain‐valley landscape.…”

A new ant species of the genus Carebara Westwood, 1840 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmicinae) with a key to Chinese species

“…References. Xu (2003) ; Fontanilla et al (2019) ; He et al (2020) ; Liu et al (2020) ; Hosoishi et al (2022) .…”

“…References. Zhou and Zheng (1997) ; Zhou (2001) ; Lin and Wu (2003) ; Zhou et al (2006) ; Terayama (2009) ; Guénard and Dunn (2012) ; Liu et al (2020) .…”

Phylogenetic diversity only weakly mitigates climate‐change‐driven biodiversity loss in insect communities

“…Gaoligongshan runs nearly 500 km north to south between 28°30′N and 24°40′N, paralleling the China‐Myanmar border (Figure 1) and varying in elevation from 523 m above sea level to a snow cap at 5128 m. Its vegetation types range from mixed coniferous‐broadleaf forest in the north to subtropical forest in the south (Li & Li, 2020; Liu et al, 2021). The region's rugged topography has generated high species richness in plants (Xing & Ree, 2017), vertebrates (Dumbacher et al, 2011; Yang et al, 2019), and arthropods (Liu et al, 2020; Yi et al, 2021). At 28,000 km 2 (7% of the area of Yunnan), Gaoligongshan contains at least 57.5% of birds, 61% of mammals, and 23% of ant species ever reported in Yunnan.…”