Biodiversity and host specificity of chrysomelid beetles in a tropical montane rainforest ecosystem

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This project is a contribution to the development of workflows for the acceleration of biodiversity inventorying and for species re-identification in complex ecosystems, as described in the introductory text for the “ABA Ecuador” group. We will focus on a species-rich group of herbivorous beetles, the Chrysomelidae, and combine for this purpose the expertise of two different working groups, one for the taxonomy and biology of these beetles (second applicant), and one for molecular biodiversity research (first applicant). More than 40.000 species of Chrysomelidae have been described to date globally. Their relationship with food plants is little studied. A detailed analysis of host-specificity and of species ranges along altitudinal gradients is necessary to understand mechanisms that maintain high biodiversity in tropical mountain forests. Since taxonomic work requires much time and many experts, our approach will be “reverse taxonomy”: starting with the development of species-specific markers, vouchering of specimens, linking metadata, sequence data and images for each voucher in databases, to enable later classical taxonomic work with the same material. The results will be used to test a series of ecological hypotheses concerning the correlation of community composition and species presence with the diversity of other organisms and with environmental parameters.