Banca de DEFESA: TALES MARTINS DE ALENCAR PAIVA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : TALES MARTINS DE ALENCAR PAIVA
DATE: 19/02/2020
TIME: 13:30
LOCAL: Sala de Reuniões - DECOL
TITLE:

Insect herbivores and outcrossing rate in seed plants

KEY WORDS:

Evolutionary models;herbivory;mating system;natural enemies;Red Queen Hypothesis

PAGES: 78
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Ecologia
SUMMARY:

Evolution of plant mating system, such as selfing and outcrossing ways, is an intriguing question in plant biology, since that can suffer influence of several ecological factors. The Red Queen hypothesis suggests that biotic interactions parasite-host-like is the major factor driving the evolution and persistence of sexual reproduction in nature. Therefore, in light of this hypothesis, is expected that species under high pressures of natural enemies, present high investment in sex, that in plants it can be measurement by the outcrossing rate, a metric based in molecular markers. There are support for Red Queen for several groups of animals, however in plant kingdom this hypothesis remains underexploited, especially using comparative approaches. Here, our main objective was test if the evolutionary pressure of insect herbivores is effective in predict outcrossing rates in seed plants. For that, we fitted phylogenetic regressions using two independent datasets for these two variables, also including some vegetative covariables: life span, growth form, specific leaf area and maximum height. The regressions were performed under two alternative evolutionary models: Brownian Motion and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck. We also tested the Red Queen prediction for natives and exotics species, to analyze the role of the coevolutionary time between plant and herbivores in mating system driving. We found, in both models, that plant species under higher pressure of insect herbivores richness had higher outcrossing rates. The same pattern remains in native species but not in exotics. In the same line, we found that tall and longer-lived plants tend to be higher outcrossing rates than small and short-lived. These results are in accordance with the expected by the Red Queen hypothesis, supporting the still scarce empirical framework of macroevolutionary studies about the role of natural enemies on evolution of mating system in seed plants.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1678202 - CARLOS ROBERTO SORENSEN DUTRA DA FONSECA
Externo à Instituição - GUSTAVO BRANT DE CARVALHO PATERNO
Interna - 3058386 - VANESSA GRAZIELE STAGGEMEIER