New Ant Species Discovered from Kerala Named After JNCASR Researcher, Evolutionary Biologist

New ant species discovered from Kerala named after JNCASR researcher, evolutionary biologist Two new species of a rare ant genus have been discovered in India. The species of the ant genus Ooceraea found in Kerala, and Tamil Nadu add to the diversity of this rare genus. They differ from others of the same genus on the basis of the number of antennal segments. One of them found in the Periyar Tiger Reserve of Kerala, has been named Ooceraea joshii, in honour of Prof. Amitabh Joshi, a distinguished evolutionary biologist from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. New species are typically named after some distinguishing attribute or location but are often named after scientists as a means of honouring their research contributions to biology, especially in the fields of evolutionary and organismal biology, ecology or systematics. The two new species, the first ones spotted with ten-segmented antennae among this rare genus, were discovered by a team led by Prof. Himender Bharti of Punjabi University, Patiala. The discovery has been published in the journal ZooKeys. The genus is currently represented by 14 species of which eight possess nine-segmented antennae, while five possess eleven- segmented antennae and one species has recently been reported with eight-segmented antennae. In India, the genus was so far represented by two species with nine- and eleven-segmented antennae respectively. The newly discovered ant species with ten segmented antennae discovered, establish an old world lineage that contains a species emerging as the only model organism among the ant subfamily. Fig 3. Ooceraea joshii sp. nov. Body in dorsal view [Bharti H. et al. 2021. Two new species of Ooceraea (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Dorylinae) from India with ten-segmented antennae. ZooKeys 1010: 165-183; Publication link: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1010.58436 .

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Convergent Evolution of the Army Ant Syndrome and Congruence in Big-Data Phylogenetics
bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/134064; this version posted May 4, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. Convergent evolution of the army ant syndrome and congruence in big-data phylogenetics Marek L. Borowiec Department of Entomology and Nematology, One Shields Avenue, University of California at Davis, Davis, California, 95616, USA Current address: School of Life Sciences, Social Insect Research Group, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The evolution of the suite of morphological and behavioral adaptations underlying the eco- logical success of army ants has been the subject of considerable debate. This ”army ant syn- drome” has been argued to have arisen once or multiple times within the ant subfamily Do- rylinae. To address this question I generated data from 2,166 loci and a comprehensive taxon sampling for a phylogenetic investigation. Most analyses show strong support for convergent evolution of the army ant syndrome in the Old and New World but certain relationships are sensitive to analytics. I examine the signal present in this data set and find that conflict is di- minished when only loci less likely to violate common phylogenetic model assumptions are considered. I also provide a temporal and spatial context for doryline evolution with time- calibrated, biogeographic, and diversification rate shift analyses. This study underscores the need for cautious analysis of phylogenomic data and calls for more efficient algorithms em- ploying better-fitting models of molecular evolution.
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