Contrary to popular belief, ants are more closely related to bees than they are to most wasps, researchers from the University of California, Davis found.
Their study, published in the journal Current Biology, uses state-of-the-art genome sequencing and bioinformatics to answer a long-standing question regarding evolutionary history.
Ants, bees and stinging wasps all belong to the aculeate (stinging) Hymenoptera clade, which boasts extensive social behavior.
However, despite the many studies conducted on the insects, their genetic relationships have largely remained a mystery. Ants' relationship to the other two have remained especially unclear, Phil Ward, an ant specialist and professor of entomology, explained.
"We were able to resolve this question by employing next-generation sequencing technology and advances in bioinformatics," Ward said. "This phylogeny, or evolutionary tree, provides a new framework for understanding the evolution of nesting, feeding and social behavior in Hymenoptera."
Knowing this represents an important step in understanding the differences exhibited by each insect, said Ward's colleague, Assistant Professor Joanna Chiu.
"With a phylogeny or evolutionary progression that we think is reliable and robust, we can now start to understand how various morphological and/or behavioral traits evolved in these groups of insects, and even examine the genetic basis of these phenotypic changes," Chiu explained.
Furthermore, the findings offer a new perspective on a Cretaceous fossil known as Cariridris bipetiolata, believed at first to be the oldest fossil ant before scientists identified it as a wasp.
"Our discovery that ants and apoids are sister taxa helps to explain difficulty in the placement of Cariridris," the authors wrote in the paper, "and suggests that it is best treated as a lineage close to the root of the ant-apoid tree, perhaps not assignable with certainty to either branch."