U.S.-Italy Cooperative Research: Phylogenetic Relationshipsin the Meloini (Coleoptera: Meloidae)

该奖项将支持该大学的约翰平托教授 加州滨江的研究合作， 研究大学的Marco Bologna教授 dell'Aquila，意大利. 研究人员打算进行 Meloini部落的系统发育研究，一组 大约有200种属于甲虫家族 根结线虫科 这个家庭对我们来说 昆虫学家，因为几个不同的生活史 性状，以及它的声誉，包括物种， 农作物和家畜的害虫。 目前，Meloini被定义为幼虫阶段。 它 包括已知具有以下特征的所有黑芥亚科属： 泳动幼虫，即获得食物来源的幼虫， 在这种情况下是幼虫和食物，通过 附着在成年蜜蜂身上 部落里的成年人不分享 表明群体成员的任何特殊的相似性。 这 一项研究建议对所有可用的 所有分类群中的字符（在属组水平） 分配给Meloini，考虑到 幼虫相似性可能是由于收敛和 而不是同源性。 亚科中不相关属的分析 Nemognathinae的成员在幼虫时都是泳动的， 在这项工作中特别有启发性。 本研究 将导致部落的重新分类， 阐明了phoresy的演变，以及新的信息 对几个物种的幼虫阶段和行为的研究 根结线虫科

This award will support Professor John Pinto of the University of California Riverside in a research collaboration with Professor Marco Bologna of the Universita degli Studi dell'Aquila, Italy. The researchers intend to undertake phylogenetic studies for the tribe Meloini, a group of approximately 200 species belonging to the beetle family Meloidae. This family is of considerable interest to entomologists because of several distinctive life history traits, and its reputation as including species that are pests of crops and domestic animals. The meloini is currently defined by the larval stage. It includes all genera of the subfamily Meloinae known to have phoretic larvae, i.e. larvae that obtain their food source, in this case bee larvae and provisions, indirectly by attaching to the adult bee. Adults of the tribe do not share any special similarity that indicates group membership. This study proposes to analyze cladistically all available characters in all taxa (at the generic group level) currently assigned to the Meloini, taking into consideration the possibility that larval similarity is due to convergence and not homology. Analysis of unrelated genera in the subfamily Nemognathinae, whose members are all phoretic as larvae, will be particularly instructive in this effort. This research will result in a revised classification of the tribe, greater elucidation of the evolution of phoresy, and new information on the larval stages and behavior of several species of Meloidae.