Species morphospace boundary revisited through wing phenotypic variations of Antodynerus species (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae) from the Indian subcontinent

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Ecology and Evolution

P. P. Anand¹  S. Seena¹  Y. Shibu Vardhanan¹  P. Girish Kumar² 

[1] Biochemistry and Toxicology Division, Department of Zoology, University of Calicut, Malappuram, Kerala, India;Western Ghat Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, Kozhikode, Kerala, India;

关键词: Antodynerus;    geometric morphometrics;    phylomorphospace;    phylogenetic signal;    solitary wasps;    trait-morphospace;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fevo.2022.965577

 received in 2022-06-09, accepted in 2022-12-19,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The main objective of this study was to investigate the taxonomic significance of wing phenotypic variations (size and shape) for classifying potter wasps. This is the first study investigating the wing size and shape variations, as well as wing asymmetry, sexual dimorphism, wing integration, and phylogenetic signal analysis of all known Antodynerus species from the Indian subcontinent: A. flavescens, A. limbatus, and A. punctatipennis. We used forewings and hindwings for geometric morphometric analysis, and we proved that each species’ wing had unique size and shape variations, as well as significant right–left wing asymmetry and sexual dimorphism across the Antodynerus species, as verified by discriminant function analysis. Wings of Vespidae are longitudinally folded; based on that, we tested two alternative wing modular hypotheses for evaluating the wing integration, using two subsets organization, such as anterior–posterior (AP) and proximal-distal (PD) wing modular organization. We proved that Antodynerus species wings are highly integrated units (RV > 0.5), and we rejected our hypothesis at p < 0.05. The morphospace distribution analysis revealed that each species has its unique morphospace boundary, although they share some level of homoplasy, which suggests to us that we can use wing morphometric traits for Antodynerus species delimitation. In addition, we revealed the phylogenetic signal of Antodynerus species. Surprisingly, we found a shape-related phylogenetic signal in the forewing, and there is no significant (p > 0.05) phylogenetic signal in forewing size, hindwing shape, and size. We observed that the Antodynerus species’ forewing shape is evolutionarily more highly constrained than the hindwing. We found that A. limbatus and A. flavescens with distinct geographical distribution share a similar evolutionary history, while A. punctatipennis evolved independently.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Anand, Seena, Girish Kumar and Shibu Vardhanan.