FY2013 Annual Report

This project is a collaboration between OIST and U. of Michigan, funded by the National Science Foundation (USA).  The first phase of the project, now completed, was to generate a well-resolved phylogeny of the genus with representative taxa from around the globe, and more comprehensive sampling from our main area of interest; Indo-Malaya and Melanesia.  Our molecular dataset now includes over 1300 individuals from over 500 species from around the globe.

In a parallel effort, we have created several datasets that complement the phylogenetic dataset and will be used for comparative analysis.  In our lab at OIST, we imaged over 1000 specimens with standard views.  We developed a system of geometric morphometric landmarks and a suite of discrete and continuous character data, and recorded data for all species in our study.  In addition, we have compiled a comprehensive database of distributional data for species in the genus.  In FY2013 we used these datasets to test integrated hypotheses for the joint evolutionary dynamics of morphology, ecological habit, and biogeographic distribution in the genus.  This work is currently in the revision stage and will be published soon.

Our understanding of large-scale biodiversity patterns is strongly biased towards a few groups of vertebrates and plants, while at the opposite, studies on insects, by far the most diverse organisms, are scarce. To address this gap in our knowledge, the Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics project (GABI) aim to compile over 200 years of ant research into a single database providing distribution information for all ant species. This will allow assessing our current knowledge, and to predict present and future distribution of all species; and when combined, analyze ant diversity across large scales. Questions relative to the ecological and evolutionary patterns of ants will be addressed at the light of the distribution of other organism groups, gradients of environmental factors or of specific biological traits (e.g. size).  In FY2013 we completed the compilation phase of this dataset, which now consists of over 1.3 million ant occurrence records.  We are currently using these data for analyses of global patterns of diversity, endemism, and diversification rate.

Ants are among the most ubiquitous and ecologically dominant animal groups. Over millions of years, ant biodiversity has evolved and dispersed from Asia and Australia through the vast network of Pacific islands.  More recently, humans have unintentionally introduced many species from around the globe into the Pacific. We seek to understand the historical and contemporary processes that regulate ant biodiversity over time.  

In FY2013 we continued our projects on Indo-Pacific ants.  Lab members Benoit Guenard, Cong Liu, and Benjamin Blanchard made a collecting trip to Xingshuabanna, China and discovered a specimen of the rare ant genus Bannapone (Guenard et al. 2013). Other collecting trips were conducted in Japan and Indonesia.  Cong Liu, PhD student in the unit, will be doing his research on community ecology and community genetics of these ant communities.  This raw biodiversity information is being combined with existing data on species records generated in the GABI project and genetic data from the genomics pipeline described below to test theories and hypotheses about community assembly and diversity regulation.

Since the earliest biological studies, description and quantification of biological structures has been a basic goal of biology as well as a first step toward deeper understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes.  In Entomology, the primary imaging tools have traditionally been optical microscopy and SEM, which are essential for certain tasks and allow us to see complex structures well. But these are limited in our ability to quantitatively characterize complex shapes, surfaces, and textures.  X-Ray CT has the potential to complement existing tools by providing a digital 3D image of the interior and exterior of the organism.  These images can be manipulated, dissected, measured, and quantified.  We have been developing imaging and post-processing techniques to better quantify the functional morphology of ants, including both external and internal structures.  In FY2013, we led the procurement and installation of an Zeiss X-Ray Microscope as a common resource at OIST and have initiated a project to develop a database of 3D ant tomograms.  We have since been developing post-processing routines to filter, segment, and quantify the images.  In FY2014 we hope to build our database of scanned specimens and begin using them for comparative and functional ecological studies.

We continue our work developing theoretical approaches to understanding biodiversity dynamics. In FY2013 we continued work on network models of spatial biodiversity processes, and applications to diversity dynamics in general across social and biological systems. We are also working on new statistical methods for inferring processes in island biogeography.