Geographic and Seasonal Variation in Species Diversity and Community Composition of Frugivorous Drosophila (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and their Leptopilina (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) Parasitoids
No Thumbnail Available
Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2018-10-05
Type of Work
Department
Program
Citation of Original Publication
Chia-Hua Lue, Dorothy Borowy, Matthew L Buffington, Jeff Leips, Geographic and Seasonal Variation in Species Diversity and Community Composition of Frugivorous Drosophila (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and their Leptopilina (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) Parasitoids, Environmental Entomology, Volume 47, Issue 5, October 2018, Pages 1096–1106, https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvy114
Rights
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Abstract
Many studies have investigated species diversity patterns across space and time, but few have explored patterns of coexistence of tightly interacting species. We documented species diversity patterns in a host–parasitoid system across broad geographic location and seasons. We calculated species diversity (H and eH ′) and compared the relationship between community similarity and geographic distances of frugivorous Drosophila host (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and Leptopilina parasitoid (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) communities across Eastern North America, from New Hampshire to Florida, at two time points during the breeding season. We also analyzed the influence of environmental factors on species assemblages via constrained correspondence analysis and lastly calculated cluster dendrograms to identify potential host–parasitoid interactions. We found that the composition of Drosophila–Leptopilina communities varied significantly with latitude. Interestingly, diversity increased with increasing latitude, a trend counter to latitudinal patterns of diversity observed in many other taxa. We also found seasonal effects of monthly temperature range and precipitation on host biodiversity patterns across geographic locations. Cluster dendrograms nominated potential parasitoid–hosts and competitive interactions to be validated in the future studies. The present study fills an important gap of knowledge in North American Drosophila–Leptopilina species diversity patterns and lays the groundwork for future ecological and evolutionary studies in this system.