Host diversity and environmental variables as determinants of the species richness of the parasitoids of leaf-cutting ants

Journal of Biogeography

Volumn 37, Issue 12, 2010, Pages 2305-2316

  Elizalde, Luciana ^a   Folgarait, Patricia Julia ^a  

^a UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE QUILMES   (Argentina)

Author keywords

Argentina; Attini; Climatic variables; Decapitating flies; Endoparasitoids; Formicidae; Paraguay; Phoridae; Spatial scales; Symbiosis

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; ANT; CANONICAL ANALYSIS; ENDOPARASITE; ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR; FLY; HOST-PARASITOID INTERACTION; NUMERICAL MODEL; OBLIGATE BEHAVIOR; SPECIATION (BIOLOGY); SPECIES DIVERSITY; SPECIES RICHNESS; SYMBIOSIS;

ARGENTINA; PARAGUAY;

ATTA; ATTINI; FORMICIDAE; PHORIDAE;

EID: 78649524583     PISSN: 03050270     EISSN: 13652699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02361.x     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Agresti, A. (2002) Categorical data analysis, 2nd edn. John Wiley and Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
2. Beckers, R., Goss, S., Deneubourg, J.L. & Pasteels, J.M. (1989) Colony size, communication and ant foraging strategy. Psyche, 96, 239-256.
3. Bonetto, A. (1959) Las hormigas cortadoras de la provincia de Santa Fe (géneros Atta y Acromyrmex). Dirección General de Recursos Naturales. Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería, Provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina.
4. Borgmeier, T. (1931) Sobre alguns phorideos que parasitam a saúva e outras formigas cortadeiras (Diptera: Phoridae). Arquivos do Instituto Biológico, 4, 209-228.
5. Bragança, M.A.L. & Medeiros, Z.C.S. (2006) Ocorrência e características biológicas de forídeos parasitóides (Diptera: Phoridae) da saúva Atta laevigata (Smith) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) em Porto Nacional, TO. Neotropical Entomology, 35, 408-411.
6. Bragança, M.A.L., Tonhasca, A.J. & Della Lucia, T.M.C. (1998) Reduction in the foraging activity of the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens caused by the phorid Neodohrniphora sp. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 89, 305-311.
7. Brown, B.V. (1997) Revision of the Apocephalus attophilus group of ant-decapitating flies (Diptera: Phoridae). Contributions in Science, 468, 1-60.
8. Brown, B.V., Disney, R.H.L., Elizalde, L. & Folgarait, P.J. (2010) New species and new records of Apocephalus Coquillett (Diptera: Phoridae) that parasitize ants (Hymen-optera: Formicidae) in America. Sociobiology, 55, 165-190.
9. Colwell, R.K. & Coddington, J. (1994) Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 345, 101-118.
10. Colwell, R.K., Mao, C.X. & Chang, J. (2004) Interpolating, extrapolating, and comparing incidence-based species accumulation curves. Ecology, 85, 2717-2727.
11. Disney, R.H.L. (1994) Scuttle flies: the Phoridae. Chapman and Hall, London.
12. Disney, R.H.L., Elizalde, L. & Folgarait, P.J. (2006) New species and revision of Myrmosicarius (Diptera: Phoridae) that parasitize leaf-cutter ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Sociobiology, 47, 771-809.
13. Disney, R.H.L., Elizalde, L. & Folgarait, P.J. (2009) New species and new records of scuttle flies (Diptera: Phoridae) that parasitize leaf-cutter and army ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Sociobiology, 54, 601-632.
14. Elizalde, L. (2009) Biogeografía y comunidades de fóridos parasitoides de hormigas cortadoras de hojas: diversidad del sistema y partición del recurso hospedador. PhD Thesis, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Bernal, Argentina.
15. Erthal, M.J. & Tonhasca, A.J. (2000) Biology and oviposition behavior of the phorid Apocephalus attophilus and the response of its host, the leaf-cutting ant Atta laevigata. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 95, 71-75.
16. Farji-Brener, A.G. & Ruggiero, A. (1994) Leaf-cutting ants (Atta and Acromyrmex) inhabiting Argentina: patterns in species richness and geographical ranges sizes. Journal of Biogeography, 21, 391-399.
17. Feener, D.H., Jr & Brown, B.V. (1997) Diptera as parasitoids. Annual Review of Entomology, 42, 73-97.
18. Feener, D.H., Jr & Moss, K.A.G. (1990) Defense against parasites by hitchhikers in leaf-cutting ants: a quantitative assessment. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 26, 17-29.
19. Folgarait, P.J., Bruzzone, O., Porter, S.D., Pesquero, M.A. & Gilbert, L.E. (2005) Biogeography and macroecology of phorid flies that attack fire ants in south-eastern Brazil and Argentina. Journal of Biogeography, 32, 353-367.
20. Folgarait, P.J., Patrock, R.J.W. & Gilbert, L.E. (2007) Associations of fire ant phorids and microhabitats. Environmental Entomology, 36, 731-742.
21. Fowler, H.G. (1985) Leaf-cutting ants of the genera Atta and Acromyrmex of Paraguay (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Deutsche Entomologishe Zeitshrift, 32, 19-34.
22. Godfray, H.C.J. (1994) Parasitoids: behavioral and evolutionary ecology. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
23. Gonçalves, C.R. (1961) O gênero Acromyrmex no Brasil (Hym. Formicidae). Studia Entomologica, 4, 113-180.
24. Gotelli, N.J. & Colwell, R.K. (2001) Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecology Letters, 4, 379-391.
25. Guisan, A. & Hofe, U. (2003) Predicting reptile distributions at the mesoscale: relation to climate and topography. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 1233-1243.
26. Haddad, N.M., Tilman, D., Haarstad, J., Ritchie, M.E. & Knops, J.M.H. (2001) Contrasting effects of plant richness and composition on insect communities: a field experiment. The American Naturalist, 158, 17-35.
27. Hambäck, P.A., Summerville, K.S., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Krauss, J., Englund, G. & Crist, T.O. (2007) Habitat specialization, body size, and family identity explain lepidopteran density-area relationships in a cross-continental comparison. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 8368-8373.
28. Hawkins, B.A. (1990) Global patterns of parasitoid assemblage size. Journal of Animal Ecology, 59, 57-72.
29. Hawkins, B.A. & Porter, E.E. (2003) Does herbivore diversity depend on plant diversity? The case of California butterflies. The American Naturalist, 161, 40-49.
30. Hawkins, B.A. & Sheehan, W. (eds) (1994) Parasitoid community ecology. Oxford University Press, New York.
31. Heinzl, H. & Mittlböck, M. (2003) Pseudo R-squared measures for Poisson regression models with over- or underdispersion. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 44, 253-271.
32. Hölldobler, B. & Wilson, E.O. (1990) The ants. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
33. Hutchinson, G.E. (1959) Homage to Santa Rosalia or why are there so many kinds of animals? The American Naturalist, 93, 145-159.
34. Janzen, D.H. (1981) The peak in North American ichneumonid species richness lies between 38 degrees and 42 degrees N. Ecology, 62, 532-537.
35. Kelly, C.K. & Southwood, T.R.E. (1999) Species richness and resource availability: a phylogenetic analysis of insects associated with trees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 96, 8013-8016.
36. Knops, J.M.H., Tilman, D., Haddad, N.M., Naeem, S., Mitchell, C.E., Haarstad, J., Ritchie, M.E., Howe, K.M., Reich, P.B., Siemann, E. & Groth, J. (1999) Effects of plant species richness on invasion dynamics, disease outbreaks, insect abundances and diversity. Ecology Letters, 2, 286-293.
37. Lapchin, L. & Guillemaud, T. (2005) Asymmetry in host and parasitoid diffuse coevolution: when the red queen has to keep a finger in more than one pie. Frontiers in Zoology, 2, 4 Available at.
38. Legendre, P. & Legendre, L. (1998) Numerical ecology, 2nd edn. Elsevier Science, Amsterdam.
39. Mac Nally, R. & Fleishman, E. (2002) Using 'indicator' species to model species richness: model development and predictions. Ecological Applications, 12, 79-92.
40. Medellín, R.A., Equihua, M. & Amin, M.A. (2000) Bat diversity and abundance as indicators of disturbance in Neotropical rainforests. Conservation Biology, 14, 1666-1675.
41. Morrison, L.W. & King, J.R. (2004) Host location behavior in a parasitoid of imported fire ant. Journal of Insect Behavior, 17, 367-383.
42. Oksanen, J., Kindt, R., Legendre, P. & O'Hara, R.B. (2006) Vegan: community ecology package, version 1.8-3. Available at.
43. R Development Core Team (2006) R: a language and environment for statistical computing, version 2.7.0. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Available at.
44. Rahbek, C. (2005) The role of spatial scale and the perception of large-scale species-richness patterns. Ecology Letters, 8, 224-239.
45. Ricklefs, R.E. & Schluter, D. (1993) Species diversity in ecological communities. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
46. Sheehan, W. (1994) Parasitoid community structure: effects of host abundance, phylogeny, and ecology. Parasitoid community ecology (ed. by B.A. Hawkins and W. Sheehan), pp. 90-107. Oxford University Press, New York.
47. Siemann, E., Tilman, D. & Haarstad, J. (1999) Abundance, diversity and body size: patterns from a grassland arthropod community. Journal of Animal Ecology, 68, 824-835.
48. Spiesman, B.J. & Cumming, G.S. (2007) Communities in context: the influences of multiscale environmental variation on local ant community structure. Landscape Ecology, 23, 313-325.
49. Stireman, J.O. & Singer, M.S. (2003) Determinants of parasitoid-host associations: insights from a natural tachinid-lepidopteran community. Ecology, 84, 296-310.
50. Tonhasca, A.J. (1996) Interactions between a parasitic fly, Neodohrniphora declinata (Diptera: Phoridae), and its host, the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens rubropilosa (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Ecotropica, 2, 157-164.
51. Tonhasca, A.J., Bragança, M.A.L. & Erthal, M.J. (2001) Parasitism and biology of Myrmosicarius grandicornis (Diptera, Phoridae) in relationship to its host, the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Insectes Sociaux, 48, 154-158.
52. Tylianakis, J.M., Tscharntke, T. & Klein, A.M. (2006) Diversity, ecosystem function, and stability of parasitoid-host interactions across a tropical habitat gradient. Ecology, 87, 3047-3057.
53. Weber, N.A. (1966) Fungus-growing ants. Science, 153, 587-604.
54. Wetterer, J.K., Schultz, T.R. & Meier, R. (1998) Phylogeny of fungus-growing ants (tribe Attini) based on mtDNA sequence and morphology. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 9, 42-47.
55. Whitfield, J.B. (1998) Phylogeny and evolution of host-parasitoid interactions in Hymenoptera. Annual Review of Entomology, 43, 129-151.
56. Wild, A. (2007) A catalogue of the ants of Paraguay (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa, 1622, 1-55.
57. Winkelmann, R. & Zimmermann, K.F. (1995) Recent developments in count data modelling: theory and application. Journal of Economic Surveys, 9, 1-24.