Climatic correlates of body size in European tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Climatic correlates of body size in European tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) Simone Fattorini & Roberto Lo Monaco & Andrea Di Giulio & Werner Ulrich
Received: 17 June 2013 / Accepted: 4 December 2013 / Published online: 29 December 2013 # Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik 2014
Abstract Tenebrionidae are one of the largest families of beetles and are known for their adaptations to hot and dry climates. An increase in body size also increases the volume/ surface area ratio, which reduces transpiration, and hence water loss. If an increase in body size is an important adaptation in tenebrionids to cope with increasing aridity, we expect a correlation between body size and climatic gradients in the major tenebrionid clades. Alternatively, we can postulate that arid climates do not drive body size evolution, but rather select, from a wider fauna containing species of any size, those that have larger bodies. In this case we expect that drier regions will host faunas that contain, on average, larger species. To test the first hypothesis, we correlated inter-specific body size variation in the main tenebrionid clades with climatic gradients in Europe. We found only weak trends. To test Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13127-013-0164-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. S. Fattorini Azorean Biodiversity Group (CITA-A) and Platform for Enhancing Ecological Research & Sustainability (PEERS), University of the Azores, Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira, Açores, Portugal S. Fattorini (*) Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences, University of Milano Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 2, 20126 Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] R. Lo Monaco : A. Di Giulio Department of Sciences, University of Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, 00146 Rome, Italy A. Di Giulio e-mail: [email protected] W. Ulrich Ecology and Biogeography, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Lwowska 1, 87-100 Toruń, Poland e-mail: [email protected]
the second hypothesis, we regressed mean body size of European country faunas against climatic characteristics. We found a strong increase in body size in southern faunas experiencing hot and dry climates. Therefore, increase in body size is not a major adaptation in tenebrionid evolution, but climate is an important filtering factor that determines a prevalence of larger species in southern Europe. Keywords Biogeography . Body size . Europe . Darkling beetles . Macroecology
Introduction The family Tenebrionidae is one of the largest of Coleoptera, comprising about 19,000 known species (Aalbu et al. 2002). Adult tenebrionids exhibit a diversity of form possibly exceeding that of any other family of beetles. Tenebrionidae occur in all major zoogeographical regions and are strongly represented also in hot deserts, where other insects are scarce. In general, tenebrionid species inhabiting environments characterized by high temperatures and low precipitations exhibit a number of well
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