10.5061/DRYAD.SS427
Kitson, James J. N.
University of East Anglia
Warren, Ben H.
University of East Anglia
Florens, F. B. Vincent
University of Mauritius
Baider, Claudia
Mauritius Sugarcane Industry Research Institute
Strasberg, Dominique
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le
Développement
Emerson, Brent C.
University of East Anglia
Data from: Molecular characterisation of trophic ecology within an island
radiation of insect herbivores (Curculionidae: Entiminae: Cratopus).
Dryad
dataset
2013
Cratopus ovalis
Cratopus melanocephalus
Natural Selection and Contemporary Evolution
Species interactions
Cratopus murinus
Cratopus vulgaris
Holocene
2013-07-26T17:32:25Z
2013-07-26T17:32:25Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.12477
212694 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The phytophagous beetle family Curculionidae is the most species-rich
insect family known, with much of this diversity having been attributed to
both co-evolution with food plants and host-shifts at key points within
the early evolutionary history of the group. Less well understood is the
extent to which patterns of host use vary within or among related species,
largely because of the technical difficulties associated with quantifying
this. Here we develop a recently characterised molecular approach to
quantify diet within and between two closely related species of weevil
occurring primarily within dry forests on the island of Mauritius. Our aim
is to quantify dietary variation across populations and assess adaptive
and non-adaptive explanations for this, and to characterise the nature of
a trophic shift within an ecologically distinct population within one of
the species. We find that our study species are polyphagous, consuming a
much wider range of plants than would be suggested by the literature. Our
data suggest that local diet variation is largely explained by food
availability, and locally specialist populations consume food plants that
are not phylogenetically novel, but do appear to represent a novel
preference. Our results demonstrate the power of molecular methods to
unambiguously quantify dietary variation across populations of insect
herbivores, providing a valuable approach to understanding trophic
interactions within and among local plant and insect herbivore
communities.
Alignment of all phased ITS2 individualsSample names are in the following
format: indentifier_species_(collection site). The letters a and b
suffixed to the identifier denote the alleles for the same individual.
Homozygotes are entered twice. Individuals were phased using a combination
of the program PHASE 2.1 as implemented in DNASP v5 and Indelligent v1.2
(available from:
imperialis.inhs.illinois.edu/dmitriev/indel.asp).ITS2_dryad.fastaGenbank
accession numbersA table of genbank accession numbers for all specimens
collected during this study. Additional columns are included indicating
the species and sampling site for each specimen.Kitson et al Genbank
refs.xlsxPlant trnL references and beetle derived variantsA fasta file of
plant sequences amplified for this paper. Sequences are not aligned
globally but beetle variants are aligned to each plant reference. The
description section of each fasta sequence explains whether a beetle
derived sequence was identified by comparison to a reference sequence or
using SAP.Plant references and beetle variants.fasta
South-West Indian Ocean
Mauritius