Publication Date:
2014-03-15
Description:
Ecological specialization should minimize niche overlap, yet herbivorous neotropical flies (Blepharoneura) and their lethal parasitic wasps (parasitoids) exhibit both extreme specialization and apparent niche overlap in host plants. From just two plant species at one site in Peru, we collected 3636 flowers yielding 1478 fly pupae representing 14 Blepharoneura fly species, 18 parasitoid species (14 Bellopius species), and parasitoid-host associations, all discovered through analysis of molecular data. Multiple sympatric species specialize on the same sex flowers of the same fly host-plant species-which suggests extreme niche overlap; however, niche partitioning was exposed by interactions between wasps and flies. Most Bellopius species emerged as adults from only one fly species, yet evidence from pupae (preadult emergence samples) show that most Bellopius also attacked additional fly species but never emerged as adults from those flies.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Condon, Marty A -- Scheffer, Sonja J -- Lewis, Matthew L -- Wharton, Robert -- Adams, Dean C -- Forbes, Andrew A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2014 Mar 14;343(6176):1240-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1245007.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, IA 52314, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24626926" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Base Sequence
;
Biodiversity
;
Cucurbitaceae/*parasitology
;
Flowers/parasitology
;
*Food Chain
;
*Herbivory
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Peru
;
Pupa/parasitology
;
Tephritidae/embryology/*parasitology
;
Wasps/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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