Reformulação do conceito de especialização trófica e sua aplicação a espécies e comunidades

Author(s)

Leonardo Ré Jorge

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia
• Defense date: 2014-08-22

Examining board members

Thomas Michael Lewinsohn; Luciano Cagnolo; Marcus Aloizio Martinez de Aguiar; Marco Aurélio Pizo; Karina Lucas Silva Brandão

• Advisor: Thomas Michael Lewinsohn

Abstract

In this thesis we propose a development of the resource specialization concept to include aspects usually not taken into account, especially for trophic interactions: affinities among resource types, their availabilities and cooccurrence patterns with consumers. By incorporating recent advances in ecophylogenetics and null modelling, we propose new metrics for the specialization of species and communities and apply these advances to address particular questions. In the first chapter the general conceptual framework is presented and a metric for the specialization of species is proposed and exemplified. The second chapter, mostly methodological, expands this metric for communities and proposes a hierarchical partitioning of the variation in specialization among species and locations. The third chapter tests this toolset in showing the relationship between specialization and geographic distribution ranges of endophagous insects feeding in Asteraceae flowerheads in Brazil. Finally, the fourth chapter uses the same dataset to investigate the role of phylogenetic diversity of resources in determining the richness of insect herbivores using them (AU)