Morphometric analysis of fossil bumble bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombini) reveals their taxonomic affinities

Dehon, Manuel; Engel, Michael S.; Gérard, Maxence; Aytekin, A. Murat; Ghisbain, Guillaume; Williams, Paul H.; Rasmont, Pierre; Michez, Denis

doi:10.3897/zookeys.891.36027

Cited by 32 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…De Wappler et al, 2012;Dehon et al, 2014Dehon et al, , 2019. In this field of research, the results of this quantitative analysis can either confirm those obtained using traditional morphological features or refine their attribution (Dehon et al, 2019). In our study, 13 out of the 16 types were attributed to the initial assessment based on descriptive morphology, with high PP values (> 85%) and even 15 out of 16 types were correctly attributed when only using datasets corresponding to their caste.…”

Section: Diagnosis Of Alpinobombus Speciessupporting

confidence: 63%

“…morphological features are the only information available) have mostly been used in palaeontology until now (e.g. De Wappler et al, 2012;Dehon et al, 2014Dehon et al, , 2019. In this field of research, the results of this quantitative analysis can either confirm those obtained using traditional morphological features or refine their attribution (Dehon et al, 2019).…”

Section: Diagnosis Of Alpinobombus Speciesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Here, we present an original study to associate old type material with recent specimens using the wing shape through geometric morphometric analyses. Geometric morphometric analyses have been widely used to discriminate bumblebees between castes (Gérard et al, 2015), or different taxonomic levels (Aytekin et al, 2007;Kozmus et al, 2011) as well as fossil specimens (Dehon et al, 2019), often with a high level of discrimination (but see Lecocq et al, 2015). We aim to assess: (i) if wing shape can be used as a taxonomically diagnostic trait; and (ii) if older named type specimens can be associated with taxa recognized using other characters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The utility of wing morphometrics for assigning type specimens to cryptic bumblebee species

Gérard

Martinet

Dehon

et al. 2020

Systematic Entomology

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Since the beginning of taxonomy, species have been described based on morphology, but the advent of using semio‐chemicals and genetics has led to the discovery of cryptic species (i.e. morphologically similar species). When a new cryptic species is described, earlier type specimens have to be re‐evaluated, although this process can be challenging as only nondestructive methods ought to be used in order to preserve the integrity of the type specimens. Methods should allow comparison with recently collected specimens clustered based on chemical, ethological and/or genetic traits with old specimens (i.e. type specimens) where only morphological traits are available. Here we develop a method based on geometric morphometric analyses of wing shape for a taxonomically challenging group of bumblebees, the subgenus Alpinobombus Skorikov. We consider nine monophyletic taxa (including several cryptic species) to assess the accuracy of this method to discriminate the taxa based on their wing shape and then to attribute type specimens using a leave‐one‐out cross‐validation procedure. We show that, for these bees, wing shape is taxon‐specific, except for two sister taxa for which the species status is still debated. Moreover, for most of the taxa, type specimens were correctly attributed with high posterior probabilities of attribution, except for a few type specimens corresponding to the same two sister taxa where taxa delimitation based on wing shape was previously the subject of discussion. Our study highlights the potential of geometric morphometric analyses to help in the re‐attribution of type specimens when the existence of cryptic species is revealed.

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Section: Diagnosis Of Alpinobombus Speciessupporting

confidence: 63%

Section: Diagnosis Of Alpinobombus Speciesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The utility of wing morphometrics for assigning type specimens to cryptic bumblebee species

Gérard

Martinet

Dehon

et al. 2020

Systematic Entomology

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“…7. Sample sites for barcodes for the subgenus Melanobombus von Dalla Torre, 1880, colour-coded for the order in which the samples of selected barcoded individuals were added to the analyses, from blue (2011) to red (2019) (specimens may be much older). Spherical projection with the North Pole shown as a star, international boundaries as recognized by the UN shown as grey lines.…”

Section: Recognising Candidate Species From Gene Coalescentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Widespread polytypic species or complexes of local species? Revising bumblebees of the subgenus Melanobombus world-wide (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombus)

Williams¹,

Dorjsuren²,

Byvaltsev³

et al. 2020

EJT

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2,144

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Species are often presumed to be apparent in nature, but in practice they may be difficult to recognise, especially when viewed across continents rather than within a single site. Coalescent-based Poisson-tree-process (PTP) models applied to fast-evolving genes promise one quantitative criterion for recognising species, complete with the estimates of uncertainty that are required of a scientific method. Such methods face challenges especially in discerning between widespread polytypic species and complexes of closely related, restricted-range species. In particular, ‘over-sampling’ of many closely related individuals within one species could risk causing groups of less closely-related individuals within other species appearing relatively more distinct and consequently could risk them being interpreted falsely as separate species. Some of the most persistent taxonomic problems among bumblebees (genus Bombus Latreille, 1802) are within the subgenus Melanobombus von Dalla Torre, 1880. For a global revision of Melanobombus species, we use COI barcodes and seek to reduce the risk from localised over-sampling by filtering the data to include only unique haplotypes. Unique haplotypes give more conservative results than unfiltered data, but still increase the number of species in comparison with recent morphological treatments. After integrative assessment of COI coalescents in comparison with morphological groups, the number of accepted species shows a non-linear increase with sample size that plateaus to an increase of 47% (to 25 species) compared with a previous estimate (of 17) based on morphology alone. For the most widespread and variable species-complexes, our revised species improve the match to the patterns expected of species, both for genetic divergence-with-distance and for sympatry, leading to three main inferences. (1) The particularly widespread polytypic Bombus sichelii Radoszkowski, 1859, is a single species. (2) We detect two candidates for species within previous broad concepts of each of the former B. lapidarius (Linnaeus, 1758), B. miniatus Bingham, 1897, and B. rufofasciatus Smith, 1852. Within B. lapidarius s. lat. we find insufficient evidence to corroborate the candidate species, with no coalescent or morphological support for a recent claim for a separate species, B. bisiculus Lecocq, Biella, Martinet & Rasmont, 2019 described from southern Italy, but rather we find a weak and uncorroborated coalescent for a different and much broader group of samples from across southeastern Europe but excluding Turkey. Within the former broad concepts of B. miniatus s. lat. and B. rufofasciatus s. lat. the coalescent evidence is stronger and subtle evidence from morphology corroborates recognising B. miniatus s. str. and B. eurythorax Wang, 1892 stat. rev. as separate species as well as B. rufofasciatus s. str. and B. prshewalskyi Morawitz, 1880 stat. rev. as separate species. (3) Our coalescent and morphological results ‘split’ more clearly what has long been interpreted as a single polytypic B. keriensis Morawitz, 1887, s. lat., by supporting novel concepts of the restricted-range species: B. alagesianus Reinig, 1930 stat. rev., B. incertoides Vogt, 1911 stat. rev., B. keriensis s. str., B. qilianensis sp. nov., B. separandus Vogt, 1909 stat. rev., and B. tibeticus sp. nov. A lectotype is designated for the name B. keriensis and a neotype is designated for the name B. alagesianus. We estimate the phylogeny of Melanobombus species by including three slower-evolving genes to provide more evidence for deeper relationships, to estimate the time calibration of this phylogeny, and to estimate ancestral distributions, all within a Bayesian framework. We provide the first keys for identifying all of the species of Melanobombus.

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“…Briefly, closely related but heterospecific taxa are not always expected to present significantly distinct wing shape. However, the technique is non‐destructive and has the advantage to allow quantified morphological comparisons with older material from which no genetic sequences can be obtained (Dehon et al ., 2019; Gérard et al ., 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A worthy conservation target? Revising the status of the rarest bumblebee of Europe

Ghisbain

Martinet

Wood

et al. 2021

Insect Conserv Diversity

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Against the context of global wildlife declines, targeted mitigation strategies have become critical to preserve what remains of biodiversity. However, the effective development of conservation tools in order to counteract these changes relies on unambiguous taxonomic determination and delineation. In this study, we focus on an endemic bumblebee species recorded only from the highest altitudes of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Bombus reinigiellus (Rasmont, 1983). The species has the smallest range of any European bumblebee, along with a restricted diet and an inability to disperse because of its isolated montane distribution, making it an appropriate conservation target. However, through an integrative taxonomic approach including genetics, morphometrics and semio‐chemistry, we demonstrate the conspecificity of this taxon with one of the most common and widespread bumblebee species of Europe, Bombus hortorum (L. 1761). We assign a subspecies status to this endemic taxon (Bombus hortorum reinigiellus comb. nov.) shown to be different in colour and morphology but also in wing shape and relative wing size compared to the other conspecific subspecies. Following our taxonomic revision, we reassessed the IUCN conservation status of Bombus hortorum both at the continental and Spanish scale. We then propose how historic climatic oscillations of the last Ice age could explain such a phenotypic divergence in a post‐glacial refugium and highlight the critical role of establishing unambiguous taxonomic revision prior to any conservation assessment.

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Morphometric analysis of fossil bumble bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombini) reveals their taxonomic affinities

Cited by 32 publications

References 96 publications

The utility of wing morphometrics for assigning type specimens to cryptic bumblebee species

The utility of wing morphometrics for assigning type specimens to cryptic bumblebee species

Widespread polytypic species or complexes of local species? Revising bumblebees of the subgenus Melanobombus world-wide (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombus)

A worthy conservation target? Revising the status of the rarest bumblebee of Europe

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