Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Driver Of Avian Haemosporidian Diversity And Host Specificity In The Solomon Islands, Xena Marie Mapel

Biology ETDs

Avian haemosporidians are protist parasites that are distributed worldwide. We investigated these parasites in a tropical South Pacific archipelago to answer two questions: 1) Which community characteristics influence haemosporidian diversity; 2) Does host specificity vary across islands? To answer these questions we sequenced a mitochondrial gene and created linear models to establish relationships between select variables and diversity. In addition, we calculated host breadth of each lineage and constructed models to infer predictors of diversity. The percent of infected individuals on each island was correlated with island area. Haemosporidian phylogenetic diversity on a given island was associated with the proportion …

The Evolution Of Diet Breadth In Melissodes Bees (Apidae: Eucerini), Karen W. Wright

Biology ETDs

The relationship between phytophagous insects and their host plants has interested scientists since Darwinian times. Using modern phylogenetic inference, we are able to investigate these patterns using, not only the phylogenies of the insects, but the evolutionary relationships among the plants they feed on as well. The relationships between bees and the plants they pollinate were traditionally seen as mutualistic and were treated separately from the research investigating the antagonistic relationships between phytophagous insects and their host plants. However, recent phylogenetic studies have made great progress including bee-host relationships in with the larger body of work on phytophagous insects.

The …