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

热带山地雨林生态系统中叶甲虫的生物多样性和寄主特异性

• 批准号: 168765262
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Johann Wolfgang Wägele
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Leibniz-Institut zur Analyse des Biodiversitätswandels (LIB)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2009-12-31 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/168765262?language=en
• 关键词: Biodiversity; host; specificity; chrysomelid; beetles

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.

如“阿坝厄瓜多尔”小组的介绍性案文所述，该项目有助于制定工作流程，以加速生物多样性清查和在复杂生态系统中重新确定物种。我们将集中在一个物种丰富的食草甲虫，甲虫科，并为此目的联合收割机的专业知识，两个不同的工作组，一个为这些甲虫的分类和生物学（第二申请人），和一个分子生物多样性研究（第一申请人）。迄今为止，全球已描述了超过40，000种的科。它们与食用植物的关系很少被研究。对寄主特异性和沿着海拔梯度的物种范围进行详细分析，对于了解维持热带山地森林高度生物多样性的机制是必要的。由于分类工作需要大量的时间和许多专家，我们的方法将是“反向分类”：从开发物种特异性标记开始，为标本提供凭证，将数据库中每个凭证的元数据、序列数据和图像链接起来，以便以后能够使用相同的材料进行经典分类工作。研究结果将用于检验一系列关于群落组成和物种存在与其他生物多样性和环境参数之间的相互关系的生态假设。