Contrasting Relationship of True Weevils (Curculionidae) and Woody Plants Diversity in Semi-arid Landscape Units
- PDF / 406,454 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 45 Downloads / 178 Views
ECOLOGY, BEHAVIOR AND BIONOMICS
Contrasting Relationship of True Weevils (Curculionidae) and Woody Plants Diversity in Semi-arid Landscape Units JCS REGUEIRA1 , JC SFAIR2 , RP SALOMÃO3 , L IANNUZZI4 1
Depto de Zoologia, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brasil Depto de Botânica, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brasil 3 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Brasil 4 Depto de Zoologia, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brasil 2
Keywords Herbivory, interaction, Neotropics, phytophysiognomy, plant–insect Correspondence L Iannuzzi, Depto de Zoologia, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Av. Prof. Moraes Rego, S/N, Recife, PE, Brasil; lucianaiannuzzi@ gmail.com Edited by Christian S Torres – UFRPE Received 20 March 2020 and accepted 4 August 2020 * Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil 2020
Abstract In general, insect herbivore diversity is positively correlated to plant diversity since plant assemblages structure different microhabitats and provide food resources for such insects. Although poorly studied, insect herbivores in tropical dry forests are positively affected by tree species richness and the structural architecture of vegetation. In this study, we analyzed whether true weevil and woody plants present similar patterns of diversity across different landscape units in a Neotropical tropical dry forests located in Brazil, and if there is a correlation among their assemblages. We used Hill numbers according to species richness and the inverse of Simpson to compare the taxonomic diversity of true weevils and plants in nine landscape units located at the São Francisco river basin in the states of Sergipe and Alagoas, north-eastern Brazil. All trees and shrubs with diameter at breast height (1.3 m) ≥ 5 cm were sampled, and true weevils were collected using a modified Malaise trap. We used co-correspondence analysis to test if plants and true weevil species tend to co-occur. A total of 538 true weevils from 60 species was collected, and a total of 1419 plants belonging to 49 species was recorded. There is no general pattern of co-occurrence and diversity among true weevils and plants, indicating that the plant community is not structuring true weevil assemblage in the Caatinga. However, there was positive relationship between Sibinia sp4 and Fabaceae–Mimosoideae. These results suggest true weevil–plant relationships in the Caatinga differ from that of more mesic ecosystems. Therefore, we observed that the mechanisms that regulate herbivore– plant diversity relationships do not always follow a positive relationship, as observed in previous studies.
Introduction Plant diversity is expected to be positively related to insect herbivore diversity (Haddad et al 2009), with theoretical and empirical studies supporting this pattern (Haddad et al 2009, Ebeling et al 2017a). The Resource Specialization Hypothesis, for example, suggests a diverse plant community may provide a greater diversity of food resources, thus resulting in
diverse herbivorous communities (Hutchinson 1959, Ebeling et al 2017b). Furthermo
Data Loading...
