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draft in progress project summary |
Natural History of Passiflora-feeding Flea Beetles I have been living and working at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica since October 2012, trying to tease apart the relationship between several species of Flea Beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae: Alticini) and Passionflower vines (genus Passiflora: Family Passifloraceae). The goal is to better understand the causes and controls of species diversity. A progress-timeline is informally presented in the blog Color in the Rainforest: Passionflower Flea Beetles and Butterflies and results to date are presented in the draft project summary below, entitled "Species Diversity in a Wet Tropical Forest Food Web." Here evidence is presented that species diversity in these herbivores is controlled by three independent factors; (1) host plant macroevolutionary diversification at the subgenus level, (2) forest successional stage and (3) evolution of distinct larval feeding syndromes, i.e. solitary vs group caterpillars and leaf vs root feeding flea beetle larvae. A second, related manscript models the relationship between predation, habitat patches, and species coexistence: "Modeling Patch Suitability in a Habitat Mosaic: Exploiting Marginal Patches, Stabilizing Populations, and Reducing Interspecies Overlap" Back in 2010 I prepared three web pages outlining my information at the time. Much has changed but they might be of some interest. Introduction, HCN detoxication/metabolism hypothesis and ongoing results, photos, etc. Also see articles listed in Heliconius host plant ecology 1973-1986 and biological cyanogenesis list of articles. |
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| Costa Rican research permit proposal (both English and Spanish) | |
Acknowledgements Thank you's for assisting with this project go to La Selva director Carlos de la Rosa for taking a direct interest in the research as well as crucial assistence with the permitting labyrinth (not to mention translation), to colleague Diego Dierick for all kinds of lab help any time, any where, to La Selva lab staffers Bernal Matarrita, Danilo Brenes, Orlando Vargas and Ron Vargas, and to the housekeepers, cooks and groundskeepers who make staying at La Selva a real pleasure. I also thank David Furth of the Smithsonian Institution for assisting me with flea beetle taxonomy and natural history and taking a personal interest in the project. I also thank Carlos Garcia-Robledo, also of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Connecticut, for his genetic "barcoding" analysis of the flea beetles. Both of these were essential contributions to the project and increased its value greatly. Finally, I am grateful to my wife Kim for accompanying me at La Selva for over 15 months!, and to our friends Carlos de la Rosa and Claudia Nocke, Diego, Ping, Andres and Michael Dierick. I am truly grateful for being included in this "family" and all the support they have given me. More recently I thank Colin Morrison for taking an interest in my results, enough to fashion a PhD dissertation with Larry Gilbert at the University of Texas. Colin is already off and running and will undoubtably be discovering many new things that abound in this system. |
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