Hello all!! I have been traveling through New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. I went to Mt. Charleston in Nevada (west of Las Vegas) as it is a location where Tapinoma schreiberi has been sampled once. Since there is no published data on the biology of this species I went there to find colonies and get field notes to see if it shows colony structure, nesting behaviors etc different from the novel species I have found in East Tennessee ( see my posts on my master's research). In order to strengthen the argument that the Tapinoma species nova that I have described from East Tennessee is NOT a concolor population of T. schreiberi I needed to get behavior and biological notes to see if there was significant differences between T. schreiberi and the Tapinoma species nova from East Tennessee. While on this journey I got back news that the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) data comparing Tapinoma sessile, T. schreiberi and Tapinoma species nova from East Tennessee the preliminary analysis shows T. sessile, T. schreiberi and T. nova species as three separate populations, thus giving extreme strong whole genomic evidence that the new Tapinoma from East Tennessee is NOT a concolor population of T. schreiberi. The upshot is it seems we have confirmed that the Tapinoma species nova from East Tennessee is a NEW species of Tapinoma to be added to the list of North American ant species.
Edited by PurdueEntomology, July 26 2022 - 4:32 AM.
