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Fracassi Gelin, Luiz Fernando

Biology

2014

Ph. D.

Social wasps of the subfamily Polistinae show the hioghest variation in morphology, behavior and nest architectures among all social wasps. In particular the tribe Epiponini, which includes 19 genera of Neotropical wasps, are highly eusocial, polygynic, build intricate nests, found new colonies by swanns and have a variable caste structure. To study the evolution of these interesting aspects of social biology, it is necessary to have a robust, well-supported phylogenetic hypothesis of the group being studied; however, phylogenetic hypotheses for species of Epiponini have been proposed for no more than seven genera. Here I perform phylogenetic analysis of three genera of Epiponini: Asteloeca, Synoeca and Polybia.
The genus Asteloeca was recently taxonomically revisited which led to the split of one species into two (A. tralli and A. ujhelyii) and the description of a new species (A. lutea). I provide the first phylogenetic analysis of the genus based on molecular data and describe an additional new species as well as corroborating support from male genitalia characters (Chapter 2). The genus Synoeca had been studied recently by other authors based on morphology. With the addition of molecular data, I show a new hypothesis, different from previous studies, with the relationship ((S. chalibea, S. virginea), (S. cyanea, (S. surinama, S. sepetentrionalis))) (Chapter 3).
Finally, I present the first phylogenetic hypothesis for species of Polybia, the largest genus of Epiponini with 60 species and 11 subgenera. This hypothesis, based on molecular and morphological data for 33 species and nine subgenera, suggests that Polybia is split into two main clades and one of the subgenera (Trichinothorax) is polyphyletic (Chapter 4). These analyses are a first step towards a large-scale multilocus phylogeny of epiponine wasps and provide a better support for studies of evolution of social behavior in this particular group.