PhD Student Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania
Coloration is an important phenotypic trait for taxonomic studies and has been widely used for identifying insect populations and species. However, coloration can be a poor character for species diagnosis in insects that exhibit high polymorphism in this trait, which can lead to oversplitting of taxonomic units. In orchid bees, color variation has been classified by different taxonomists as polymorphism associated with Mullerian mimicry complexes or diagnostic traits for species identification. López-Uribe et al. (2014) found several mitochondrial lineages in two species complexes that exhibit color polymorphism. The question of whether those lineages are congruent with different color morphs or represent species boundaries was not assessed in that study. Here, we used Ultraconserved Elements (UCE) phylogenomics to explore whether species diversification corresponds with color phenotypes in the Eulaema meriana and Eulaema bombiformis species complexes. We found that lineages within both complexes are structured according to geography and that color morphs are not associated with lineages except for the populations located in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. We conclude that there is compelling evidence that E. atleticana and E. niveofasciata are subspecies of E. meriana and E. bombiformis, respectively, and not separate species as previously suggested. We make recommendations on the use of color traits for orchid bee taxonomy and the significance of the subspecies as evolutionary units relevant for conservation efforts.
