Multilocus species delimitation in Mesoamerican Scaptotrigona stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) supports the existence of cryptic species

Abstract

Accelerating taxonomic knowledge and making accurate species identifications are critically important given the current biodiversity crisis, particularly in biodiversity hotspots such as Mesoamerica. Objective species delimitation that reduces investigator‐driven bias is fundamental to the establishment of appropriate conservation strategies, above all in managed species. Previous morphological and molecular studies on three managed stingless bee species of the genus Scaptotrigona distributed in Mexico (S. mexicana, S. pectoralis and S. hellwegeri) suggested that both S. mexicana and S. hellwegeri are cryptic species complexes. Herein we tested species delimitation by analysing sequence information of five markers (two mitochondrial: cox1 and 16S, and three nuclear: ITS1, EF1‐α, ArgK) within a Bayesian coalescent framework to test the putative species. We obtained two different hypotheses using a Generalized Mixed Yule Coalescent (GMYC) model: four (cox1) and six (16S) species. After the species validation step with the Bayesian species‐delimitation analysis (BPP), we suggest that only S. mexicana is a complex of two species with different distribution (along the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts, respectively). We highly recommend avoiding colony exchange between geographical regions in order to conserve the genetic integrity of both taxa.

Phylogeny and species reassessment of Hyalopterus (Aphididae, Aphidinae)

“…Recently, the ever‐increasing availability of multilocus sequences and the emergence of robust coalescent‐based species delimitation approaches have facilitated the uncovering of cryptic species diversity and have provided the unprecedented complement to understand the processes of speciation (Bellati et al, 2015; Busschau, Conradie, & Daniels, 2019; Domingos et al, 2014; Domingos, Colli, Lemmon, Lemmon, & Beheregaray, 2017; Fujita, Leache, Burbrink, McGuire, & Moritz, 2012; Hurtado‐Burillo, May‐Itzá, Quezada‐Eúan, Rúa, & Ruiz, 2017; Kotsakiozi et al, 2018; O'Connell et al, 2018; Solis‐Lemus, Knowles, & Ane, 2015). Among the methods for species delimitation, the multispecies coalescent model (MSC; Fujita et al, 2012; Rannala & Yang, 2003; Yang & Rannala, 2010, 2014) analyzing multiple loci to test alternative hypotheses of lineage divergence, is the most prevalent and has been successfully applied to delimit species for a broad array of organisms, from animals and plants (Denham, Brignone, Johnson, & Pozner, 2019; Matos‐Maraví et al, 2019) to microbial groups (Galen, Nunes, Sweet, & Perkins, 2018).…”

An integrative taxonomic and phylogenetic approach reveals a new Neotropical swarm-founding social wasp, Pseudopolybia cryptica sp. n. (Vespidae: Polistinae: Epiponini)

“…Despite several studies performed molecular species delimitation approaches to identify Hymenoptera species (Fernández-Flores et al 2013;Schwarzfeld and Sperling 2015;Williams et al 2015;Hurtado-Burillo et al 2017;Waichert et al 2019;Brasero et al 2020;Sabadini et al 2020), molecular methods have not previously been applied to alpha-taxonomic problems in Epiponini wasps. Notably, based on morphological and molecular results for Synoeca species, Menezes et al (2015) and Lopes and Menezes (2017) argued that the social wasp diversity in the Neotropical region may be underestimated due to morphological similarity of these insects, and hence they recommended the combination of morphology, po pulation-level sampling, and genetics to systematic studies for the group.…”

Integrative taxonomy uncovers hidden species diversity in the rheophilic genus Potamometra (Hemiptera: Gerridae)

“…The Bayesian coalescent method of BPP is designed to analyse multiple loci and has proven to be efficient in species delimitation (Leaché et al, 2017;Yang, 2015;Yang & Rannala, 2010) and may better reflect observations of morphological divergences (Hurtabo-Burillo, May-Itzá, Quezada-Eúan, Rúa, & Ruiz, 2016;Lin, Stur, & Ekrem, 2018;Yang & Rannala, 2017). In this study, the BPP method fully supported the seven species, and all the nodes had perfect posterior probabilities for all three combinations of the ancestral population size (θ) and the root age (τ 0 ), which indicated that BPP could yield high posterior probabilities for correct species delimitations when appropriate priors were chosen (Luo et al, 2018;Yang, 2015;Yang & Rannala, 2017).…”