Global biogeographic regions for ants have complex relationships with those for plants and tetrapods

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 5641 - 11
• Main Authors: Wang, Runxi, Kass, Jamie M., Chaudhary, Chhaya, Economo, Evan P., Guénard, Benoit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 05.07.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158/851; 631/158/852; Animals; Ants; Ants - physiology; Biodiversity; Biogeography; Biological Evolution; Distribution patterns; Flowers & plants; Geographical distribution; Humanities and Social Sciences; Insects; multidisciplinary; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Phylogeography; Plants; Plants - classification; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Similarity
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49918-2
• ISSN: 2041-1723

On a global scale, biodiversity is geographically structured into regions of biotic similarity. Delineating these regions has been mostly targeted for tetrapods and plants, but those for hyperdiverse groups such as insects are relatively unknown. Insects may have higher biogeographic congruence with plants than tetrapods due to their tight ecological and evolutionary links with the former, but it remains untested. Here, we develop a global regionalization for a major and widespread insect group, ants, based on the most comprehensive distributional and phylogenetic information to date, and examine its similarity to regionalizations for tetrapods and vascular plants. Our ant regionalization supports the newly proposed Madagascan and Sino-Japanese realms based on tetrapod delineations, and it recovers clusters observed in plants but not in tetrapods, such as the Holarctic and Indo-Pacific realms. Quantitative comparison suggests strong associations among different groups—plants showed a higher congruence with ants than with tetrapods. These results underscore the wide congruence of diverse distribution patterns across the tree of life and the similarities shared by insects and plants that are not captured by tetrapod groups. Our analysis highlights the importance of developing global biogeographic maps for insect groups to obtain a more comprehensive geographic picture of life on Earth. In this study, the authors delineate a global biogeographic map for ants based on their distributions and phylogenetic relationships. They show that current biogeographic maps based on tetrapod groups fail to capture important regions for biodiversity shared by insects and plants, which are both known to possess strong ecological and evolutionary ties.