Morphometry Of Chinese Formicinae

In the first part of this paper,575 samples of 55 types were taken as the research objects.Sixteen traits of each species of ant were measured accurately by morphological measurement method.Factor analysis,principal component analysis and systematic cluster analysis were used to explore the application of morphological measurement in the identification and classification of these species.The results showed that the three principal components had higher load value and greater contribution in total outstretched length(TL),scape index(SI),propodeum index(PI),and three traits could distinguish 55 species of ants effectively.Clustering results showed that 55 species of ants could be significantly different according to external morphology difference,also effectively classified into eight branches.The results of discriminant analysis showed that species were clustered near the centroid of the genus.These results show that morphometry can be applied to the morphological classification of Formicinae insects.In the second part of this paper,the geometric morphology measurement was studied.Principal Component Analysis(PCA)and Canonical Variable Analysis(CVA)were performed by Morpho J to analyze the shape changes of the head and chest profile of Formicinae.Principal component analysis showed that there was some overlap between the head view and the chest view between Formicinae and the subfamilies of outer group,but the P values of the Pu's distance and the Mahalanobis distance were less than 0.05,indicating that there was a significant difference between the head view and the chest view of the Formicinae and the subfamilies of outer group.The morphological changes of the lateral contour of the chest are used as classification traits.Formicinae and the subfamilies of outer group cannot be clearly distinguished,and the genus of Formicinae cannot be clearly distinguished,either.In summary,the morphometric analysis method can be applied to the classification of Formicidae insects.Geometry measurement method can be applied to the classification of Formicidae insects based on the morphological changes of the frontal contour of the headas a classification trait.It is not recommended to use the lateral morphological changes of the lateral view of the chest as a classification trait for classification studies of ants.