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Background  Army ants are the prime arthropod predators in tropical forests, with huge colonies and an evolutionary derived nomadic life style. Five of the six recognized subgenera of Old World  Dorylus  army ants forage in the soil, whereas some species of the sixth subgenus ( Anomma ) forage in the leaf-litter and some as conspicuous swarm raiders on the forest floor and in the lower vegetation (the infamous driver ants). Here we use a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences to reconstruct the phylogeny of the  Dorylus s.l . army ants and to infer the evolutionary transitions in foraging niche and associated morphological adaptations.    Results  Underground foraging is basal and gave rise to leaf-litter foraging. Leaf-litter foraging in turn gave rise to two derived conditions: true surface foraging (the driver ants) and a reversal to subterranean foraging (a clade with most of the extant  Dorylus s.s . species). This means that neither the subgenus  Anomma  nor  Dorylus s.s . is monophyletic, and that one of the  Dorylus s.s . lineages adopted subterranean foraging secondarily. We show that this latter group evolved a series of morphological adaptations to underground foraging that are remarkably convergent to the basal state.    Conclusion  The evolutionary transitions in foraging niche were more complex than previously thought, but our comparative analysis of worker morphology lends strong support to the contention that particular foraging niches have selected for very specific worker morphologies. The surprising reversal to underground foraging is therefore a striking example of convergent morphological evolution.

A molecular phylogeny of Dorylus army ants provides evidence for multiple evolutionary transitions in foraging niche