Scientists discover new ant species

An international team of scientists has discovered a previously unknown extinct ant species encased in a unique piece of amber from Africa. Using the X-ray light source PETRA III at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg the researchers, from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the University of Rennes in France, the University of Gdansk in Poland, as well as the  Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany, had examined the critical fossil remains from 13 individual animals in the amber and realised that they could not be attributed to any previously known species. The name given to the new species and genus is †Desyopone hereon gen. et sp. nov. In this way, the scientists are honouring the two research institutions involved – DESY and Hereon – which contributed significantly to this find with the help of modern imaging techniques. Ultimately, it was only possible to identify the new species and genus through the combination of extensive phenotype data from scans and recent findings from genome analyses of living ants. The team reports on its discovery in the research journal “Insects”.

Ponerinae instead of Aneuretinae

Initial anatomical comparisons led the scientists to hypothesize that the animals were a species of Aneuretinae, an almost extinct subfamily of ants known so far only through fossils and through a single living species from Sri Lanka. But they revised this identification thanks to the high-resolution images obtained by synchrotron micro-computed tomography. “The complex waist segment and the large but rudimentary mandibles – the mouthparts – are more familiar to us from the Ponerinae, a dominant group of predatory ants,” says Brendon Boudinot, who is currently working at the University of Jena on a Humboldt Research Fellowship. “For this reason, we’ve assigned the new species and genus to this subfamily, even though it has a unique appearance, as the long waist and otherwise unconstricted abdomen are more reminiscent of the Aneuretinae.”

The present research results also contribute to putting male ants more under the spotlight of evolutionary research. “Because they have such a different body shape compared to the worker ants, all of whom are female, research has neglected them for a long time. This is because males are simply too often overlooked because they cannot be properly classified,” says ant expert Boudinot. “Our results not only update the literature on identifying male ants, but also show that by understanding male-specific features, such as the sex-specific shape of the mandible, we can learn more about the evolutionary patterns of female ants.” This is because in the present study, the researchers have identified a fundamental pattern that occurs in all ants, namely that male and female mandibles follow the same developmental pattern in most species, even if they look very different.

Dr Brendon E. Boudinot is an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In the foreground a 3D image of the newly discovered ant species named "Hereon" can be seen. On the screen in the background an several million year old amber find with enclosed ants is shown.

Image: Jens Meyer (University of Jena)