ANALYSIS OF COEVOLUTIONARY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE COMMUNITIES CONSISTED OF BEANS, BEAN WEEVILS, AND PARASITIC WASPS IN TERMS OF THEIR PHYLOGENETIC CONSTRAINTS

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The main purpose of this research is to investigate the origin of coevolutionary relationships in the prey-predator interactions. We used the biotic communities consisted of three trophic levels with beans, bean weevils, and parasitic wasps. We employed the molecular phylogenetic relationship analysis for both prey and predator species.For this purpose, we collected beans from many sites in the world, including Taiwan, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Cameroon, Australia, USA(Arizona, Indiana), and Mexico. We brought back the beans collected during the field tirps to the laboratory, and waited for the emergence of bean weevils and parasitic wasps. Emerged adult were preserved in alcohol solutions and used for DNA analyses. If necessary, a part of the emerged specimen was sent to Prof. C. D. Johnson or Prof. Casas for further identifications. We obtained DNA information by PCR-RFLP based on the mtDNA region such as Cox-I, Cox-II, ND5. We began construction of phylogenetic trees based on these data.We also established many geographical strains of bean weevils which emerged from the collected beans. These strains began to be used for the long-term laboratory experiments of the prey-predator community dynamics.