The phylogeny of the social wasp subfamily Polistinae: evidence from microsatellite flanking sequences, mitochondrial COI sequence, and morphological characters.
BACKGROUND
Social wasps in the subfamily Polistinae (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) have been important in studies of the evolution of sociality, kin selection, and within colony conflicts of interest. These studies have generally been conducted within species, because a resolved phylogeny among species is lacking. We used nuclear DNA microsatellite flanking sequences, mitochondrial COI sequence, and morphological characters to generate a phylogeny for the Polistinae (Hymenoptera) using 69 species.


RESULTS
Our phylogeny is largely concordant with previous phylogenies at higher levels, and is more resolved at the species level. Our results support the monophyly of the New World subgenera of Polistini, while the Old World subgenera are a paraphyletic group. All genera for which we had more than one exemplar were supported as monophyletic except Polybia which is not resolved, and may be paraphyletic.


CONCLUSIONS
The combination of DNA sequences from flanks of microsatellite repeats with mtCOI sequences and morphological characters proved to be useful characters establishing relationships among the different subgenera and species of the Polistini. This is the first detailed hypothesis for the species of this important group.
Arévalo
Elisabeth
E
Department of Biology, Providence College, Providence, RI 02918-0001, USA. earevalo@providence.edu
Zhu
Yong
Y
Carpenter
James M
JM
Strassmann
Joan E
JE
D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV / Q000235:genetics*; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013045:Species Specificity; D014863:Wasps / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*
D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D004247:DNA; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV