Navegando por Palavras-chave "Plant-insect interactions"

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    Variação geográfica no tamanho corporal e dimorfismo sexual de tamanho em uma espécie de besouro predador de sementes de Leucaena leucocephala
    (Universidade Federal de São Paulo, 2015-07-31) Haga, Eloisa Brandão [UNIFESP]; Rossi, Marcelo Nogueira [UNIFESP]; Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)
    A central question in ecology and evolutionary biology is to explain large-scale spatial patterns of variation in body size. Explaining these patterns is important because larger individuals may show advantages in fitness than smaller individuals, resulting in adaptive and evolutionary implications. For ectothermic organisms, little is known about what variables (i.e., processes) influence these patterns. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to identify important variables that explain body size and sexual size dimorphism (SSD) variation in Acanthoscelides macrophthalmus collected from 24 Leucaena leucocephala populations, distributed along a latitudinal gradient, between the cities of Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre. The latitude, altitude, and physical and chemical traits of L. leucocephala seeds (hardness, size, water content, carbon/nitrogen relation and phenolic contents) were used as explanatory variables. Body size of males and females was not related to latitude, altitude and the physical and chemical seed traits. However, the female body size tended to vary more in size than the males, generating the SSD pattern observed in relation to latitude and altitude. Our results suggest that water content was the seed trait responsible for SSD variation, particularly for promoting changes in female body size. The males were the larger sex in lower latitudes and in higher altitudes, where the water content was smaller than in higher latitudes and lower altitudes, where the females were the larger sex. In this study, it was shown that males and females have different responses to seed water content, explaining the observed patterns of SSD variation.