As a Brazilian citizen, I grew up being struck with the “geographic” isolation of my country in the context of South America. Coincidentally, since I was a kid, I have cultivated the dream of learning and exploring the intrinsic beauty of nature. These interests brought me to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology, and to obtain a Master’s Degree in Taxonomy and Systematics. My research focus is ant evolution, and I’m personally interested in phylogenetics, morphological evolution, and ant-plant mutualisms. When not at lab or collecting ants, I like to be biking and hiking around Utah, cooking, and writing poetry.
Natural history and phylogenetic data together can be a powerful approach to understanding the evolutionary history of ant-plant associations by disentangling species relationships and instances of convergently evolved traits. The arboreal ant genus Myrmelachista (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is distributed from Mexico to Patagonia, being an adequate ecological model for the study of evolutionary transitions in ant-plant symbioses, with species known to be either dead-stem inhabitants or live-stem nesters. The live-stem associations include generalist Myrmelachista occupying various plant families or specialized live-stem nesters (=obligatory symbiotic species) inhabiting stems of a particular set of species within a plant genus. I use a phylogenomic approach (enrichment of ultra-conserved elements) and natural history data to investigate the evolutionary history of Myrmelachista and their associated plants. I present a phylogeny for species from throughout the range of the genus, covering all the morphological and behavioral variability. I uncovered the evolution of at least four instances of live stem specialization within Myrmelachista, with three separate clades convergently occupying similar understory plants. Ancestral state reconstructions suggest that those specialized associations involving a degree of plant-protecting behaviour evolved from generalized live-stem inhabiting ancestors. Those clades are inferred to have arisen during the Miocene, independently evolving similar morphological and ecological traits.