Rasopone Schmidt and Shattuck is a poorly known lineage of ants that live in Neotropical forests. Informed by phylogenetic results from thousands of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) and mitochondrial DNA barcodes, we revise the genus, providing a new morphological diagnosis and a species-level treatment. Analysis of UCE data from many Rasopone samples and select outgroups revealed non-monophyly of the genus. Monophyly of Rasopone was restored by transferring several species to the unrelated genus Mayaponera Schmidt and Shattuck. Within Rasopone, species are morphologically very similar, and we provide a ‘bird guide’ approach to identification rather than the traditional dichotomous key. Species are arranged by size in a table, along with geographic range and standard images. Additional diagnostic information is then provided in individual species accounts. We recognize a total of 15 named species, of which the following are described as new species: R. costaricensis, R. cryptergates, R. cubitalis, R. guatemalensis, R. mesoamericana, R. pluviselva, R. politognatha, R. subcubitalis, and R. titanis. An additional 12 morphospecies are described but not formally named due to insufficient material. Rasopone panamensis (Forel, 1899) is removed from synonymy and elevated to species. The following species are removed from Rasopone and made new combinations in Mayaponera: M. arhuaca (Forel, 1901), M. becculata (Mackay and Mackay, 2010), M. cernua (Mackay and Mackay, 2010), M. conicula (Mackay and Mackay, 2010), M. longidentata (Mackay and Mackay, 2010), and M. pergandei (Forel, 1909).

Figs and their associated mutualistic and parasitic wasps have been a focus of intensive ecological and evolutionary research due to their diversity, unusual reproductive biology, and highly coevolved interspecific relationships. Due to the ecological dependence of their interactions, fig wasps were once considered to be fig-species specific and to cospeciate with their hosts, however, a growing body of evidence reveals mixed support for species specificity and the importance of additional evolutionary processes (e.g., host switching) structuring these long-term interactions. Our research on the genus Idarnes Walker, 1843 (Hymenoptera, Agaonidae), a common non-pollinating wasp of New World fig flowers, reveals a community in which multiple wasp species coexist on the same host in space and time. Using both molecular and morphological data, we identify five distinct Idarnes lineages associated with a single host fig species, Ficus petiolaris Kunth, 1817 (Rosales, Moraceae). A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis including Idarnes species from numerous host fig species reveals that the lineages associated with F. petiolaris do not form a monophyletic group but are distantly related, suggesting multiple independent colonization events and subsequent diversification. Morphological and ecological data provide support that the wasps are partitioning niches within the figs, explaining the coexistence of these diverse lineages on the same host fig.These results, coupled with a growing body of research on pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps, bring into focus a more dynamic picture of fig and fig wasp coevolution and highlight how wasp lineage divergence and niche partitioning contributes to increased species diversity and community structure on a single fig host.

String sequence analysis revealed that silk spinning behavior of adult female Embioptera varies from species-specific to individualistic. This analysis included 26 species from ten taxonomic families with a total of 115 individuals. Spin-steps, 28 possible positions of the front feet during spinning, were scored from hour-long DVD recordings produced in the laboratory. Entire transcripts of hundreds to thousands of spin-steps per individual were compared by computing Levenshtein edit distances between all possible pairs of subsequences, with lengths ranging from 5 to 25—intraspecific similarity scores were then computed. Silk gallery characteristics and architecture, body size, climatic variables, and phylogenetic relationships were tested as possible drivers of intraspecific similarity in spinning behavior. Significant differences in intraspecific similarity aligned most strongly with climatic variables such that those species living in regions with high temperature seasonality, low annual precipitation, and high annual temperatures displayed more species-stereotypical spinning sequences than those from other regions, such as tropical forests. Phylogenetic signal was significant but weakly so, suggesting that environmental drivers play a stronger role in shaping the evolution of silk spinning. Body size also appears to play a role in that those of similar size are more like each other, even if not related.