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New records of ant species from Yunnan, China.

ABSTRACT: As with many other regions of the world, significant collecting, curation, and taxonomic efforts will be needed to complete the inventory of China's ant fauna. This is especially true for the highly diverse tropical regions in the south of the country, where moist tropical forests harbor high species richness typical of the Southeast Asian region. We inventoried ants in the Xingshuangbanna prefecture, Yunnan, in June 2013, using a variety of methods including Winkler extraction and hand collection to sample ant diversity. We identified 213 species/morphospecies of ants from 10 subfamilies and 61 genera. After identification of 148 valid species of the 213 total species collected, 40 species represent new records for Yunnan province and 17 species are newly recorded for China. This increases the total number of named ant species in Yunnan and China to 447 and 951 respectively. The most common species collected were Brachyponeraluteipes and Vollenhoviaemeryi. Only one confirmed exotic species Strumigenysmembranifera, was collected, although several others were potentially introduced by humans. These results highlight the high biodiversity value of the region, but also underscore how much work remains to fully document the native myrmecofauna.

SUBMITTER: Liu C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4319057 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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New records of ant species from Yunnan, China.

Liu Cong C Guénard Benoit B Guénard Benoit B Garcia Francisco Hita FH Yamane Seiki S Blanchard Benjamin B Yang Da-Rong DR Economo Evan E

ZooKeys 20150126 477

As with many other regions of the world, significant collecting, curation, and taxonomic efforts will be needed to complete the inventory of China's ant fauna. This is especially true for the highly diverse tropical regions in the south of the country, where moist tropical forests harbor high species richness typical of the Southeast Asian region. We inventoried ants in the Xingshuangbanna prefecture, Yunnan, in June 2013, using a variety of methods including Winkler extraction and hand collecti ...[more]

PMID: 25685004

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Project description:Yunnan Province, China is thought to be the original source of biovar Orientalis of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the third plague pandemic that has spread globally since the end of the 19th century. Although encompassing a large area of natural plague foci, Y. pestis strains have rarely been found in live rodents during surveillance in Yunnan, and most isolates are from rodent corpses and their fleas. In 2017, 10 Y. pestis strains were isolated from seven live rodents and three fleas in Heqing County (HQ) of Yunnan. These strains were supposed to have low virulence to local rodents Eothenomys miletus and Apodemus chevrieri because the rodents were healthy and no dead animals were found in surrounding areas, as had occurred in previous epizootic disease. We performed microscopic and biochemical examinations of the isolates,and compared their whole-genome sequences and transcriptome with those of 10 high virulence Y. pestis strains that were isolated from the adjacent city (Lijiang). We analyzed the phenotypic, genomic, and transcriptomic characteristics of live rodent isolates. The isolates formed a previously undefined monophyletic branch of Y. pestis that was named 1.IN5. Six SNPs, two indels, and one copy number variation were detected between live rodent isolates and the high virulence neighbors. No obvious functional consequence of these variations was found according to the known annotation information. Among the genes that were differentially expressed between the live rodent isolates and their high virulence neighbors, we detected five iron transfer-related genes that were significantly up-regulated in live rodent isolates compared with high virulence isolates (|log2 (FC) | >1, p.adjust <0.05), indicating these genes may be related to the low-virulence phenotype. The novel genotype of Y. pestis reported here provides further insights into the evolution and spread of plague as well as clues that may help to decipher the virulence mechanism of this notorious pathogen.

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New records of ant species from Yunnan, China.

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New records of ant species from Yunnan, China.

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