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Parasitoid Wasps in Flower Heads of Asteraceae in the Brazilian Cerrado: Taxonomical Composition and Determinants of Diversity

  • Ecology, Behavior and Bionomics
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Abstract

This study provides the first survey of the parasitoid fauna reared in flower heads of Asteraceae in the Brazilian cerrado. We investigated the relative importance of herbivore richness and plant species commonness to differences in parasitoid species richness among the plant species. A total of 15,372 specimens from 192 morphospecies belonging to 103 genera of Hymenoptera were reared from the flower heads of 74 Asteraceae species. Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonoidea were the most common superfamilies, with Eulophidae and Braconidae as the main families of parasitoid wasps. Singletons and doubletons accounted for 45% of total parasitoid species richness. The number of parasitoid species per plant species ranged from 1 to 67, and the variation in parasitoid species richness among plants was mainly explained by the number of sites in which the plants were recorded. This study shows that there is a highly diversified fauna of Hymenoptera parasitoids associated with flower heads of Asteraceae in the Brazilian cerrado. Our findings suggest that the accumulation of parasitoid species on plants is mainly determined by the regional commonness of plant species rather than the number of herbivore species associated with the plants.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to various colleagues for their valuable help with field work and to Marina R. Braun, Sérgio Vanin, José R. Mermudes, João Semir, Roberto L. Esteves, and Mara Magenta for providing or confirming identification of insects and plants. This study was supported by FAPESP grant no. 98/05085-2 to TML within the BIOTA-FAPESP Program, no. 04/15482-1 to T.M. Lewinsohn, and no. 03/02541-0 and 06/56889-2 to M. Almeida-Neto. A.R. Nascimento was supported by the CAPES Grant. MAN, CRF, TML, and APD received research productivity grants from CNPq.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Depto de Ecologia e Biologia Evolutiva, Univ Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, SP, Brasil

    A R Nascimento & A M Penteado-Dias

  2. Depto de Ecologia, Univ Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, Brasil

    M Almeida-Neto

  3. Depto de Ecologia, Univ Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brasil

    A M Almeida & C R Fonseca

  4. Lab de Interações Insetos-Plantas, Depto Biologia Animal, Instituto de Biologia, Univ Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil

    T M Lewinsohn

  5. Lab de Interações Ecológicas e Biodiversidade (LIEB), Depto de Ecologia, Univ Federal de Goiás, CP 131, CEP 74001-970, Goiânia, Goiás, Brasil

    A R Nascimento

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Nascimento, A.R., Almeida-Neto, M., Almeida, A.M. et al. Parasitoid Wasps in Flower Heads of Asteraceae in the Brazilian Cerrado: Taxonomical Composition and Determinants of Diversity. Neotrop Entomol 43, 298–306 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-014-0218-9

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