Macroevolutionary Trends of Defenses and Counterdefenses in an Ancient Plant-Insect Interaction

古代植物-昆虫相互作用中防御和反防御的宏观进化趋势

• 批准号: 9982040
• 负责人: Judith Becerra
• 金额: $ 7.5万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-05-01 至 2004-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9982040&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Macroevolutionary; Trends; Defenses; Counterdefenses; Ancient

9982040BecerraDetermining the macroevolutionary importance of plant defenses on the association between plants and the insects that eat them is critical to understanding the evolution of insect-plant interactions. Yet, until recently, this has been a difficult area of investigation because it requires rigorously derived evolutionary trees of interacting groups of insects and plant for which systematics, biogeography, ecology, and plant defensive traits are well known. This research is directed at providing a quantitative assessment of the role of plant structure and chemical defenses, host cladogenesis, and host biogeographical distributions in directing the evolution of host shifts. In this study, the evolutionary trees of the ancient and speciose Blepharida (Chrysomelidae) - Bursera (Burseraceae) system will be reconstructed. Also, profiles of structural and chemical defenses, as well as maps of geographic distributions for the plant species will be obtained to determine their relative importance in directing the evolution of these insects on these plants. Besides studying the macroevolutionary impact of plant defenses, this research will investigate the historical correlation of plant defenses with insect counter-defenses. This plant-herbivore system has spectacular defensive and counter-defensive traits that are well understood ecologically. Overall, this study will advance knowledge by providing a precise evaluation of the importance of plant defensive chemicals and defensive morphology in the macroevolution of host exploitation. It will be the first study to rigorously utilize molecular phylogenies for both insect and plant groups in the study of plant-insect coevolution.

9982040Becerra 确定植物防御对植物和吃它们的昆虫之间关系的宏观进化重要性对于理解昆虫与植物相互作用的进化至关重要。然而，直到最近，这一直是一个困难的研究领域，因为它需要严格推导的昆虫和植物相互作用群体的进化树，而系统学、生物地理学、生态学和植物防御性状是众所周知的。这项研究旨在对植物结构和化学防御、宿主分支发生和宿主生物地理分布在指导宿主转变进化中的作用进行定量评估。本研究将重建古老而物种丰富的Blepharida (Chrysomelidae) - Bursera (Burseraceae)系统的进化树。此外，还将获得植物物种的结构和化学防御概况以及地理分布图，以确定它们在指导这些昆虫在这些植物上进化方面的相对重要性。除了研究植物防御的宏观进化影响外，本研究还将调查植物防御与昆虫反防御的历史相关性。这种植物-草食动物系统具有令人惊叹的防御和反防御特征，这些特征在生态学上得到了很好的理解。总的来说，这项研究将通过精确评估植物防御化学物质和防御形态在宿主利用的宏观进化中的重要性来推进知识的发展。这将是第一个在植物-昆虫协同进化研究中严格利用昆虫和植物类群分子系统发育的研究。