Understanding a diverse insect-parasitoid community: insights from synthesizing biodiversity inventory data from the tropics
Principal Investigators:
Josephine Rodriguez
This proposal aims to synthesize the caterpillar (and their host plants and parasitoids) database inventory of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in Costa Rica (conducted by D. Janzen and W. Hallwachs) with an extensive genetic dataset from BOLD (Barcode of Life Data Systems) with focus on the Microgastrinae (Braconidae) an important group of caterpillar parasitoid wasps. Understanding the extent and cause of tropical insect diversity is one of the major challenges in modern ecology (Godfray et al., 1999) and generally requires two approaches:... more
This proposal aims to synthesize the caterpillar (and their host plants and parasitoids) database inventory of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in Costa Rica (conducted by D. Janzen and W. Hallwachs) with an extensive genetic dataset from BOLD (Barcode of Life Data Systems) with focus on the Microgastrinae (Braconidae) an important group of caterpillar parasitoid wasps. Understanding the extent and cause of tropical insect diversity is one of the major challenges in modern ecology (Godfray et al., 1999) and generally requires two approaches: 1) rigorous biodiversity inventories of the insects at particular sites; and 2) reconstructing food webs demonstrating the trophic interactions between species (Godfray et al.,1999). Those two approaches are the major goals of this project and include testing specific hypotheses on microgastrine ecology and evolution. Specifically, I will integrate the genetic data (CO1 DNA barcodes) with inventory records to assess the number of species of microgastrine wasps and levels of host specificity. This will be followed by construction and analyses of microgastrine parasitoid food webs which will provide insights into community structure, crucial in interpreting patterns of parasitoid diversity and provide the basis for hypotheses about structuring processes (Memmott and Godfray, 1993; van Veen et al., 2006).
collapse
Participants and Meetings

Working Group Participants
Activity | Dates | Further Information |
---|---|---|
Postdoctoral Fellow | 11th January 2010—31st July 2013 | Participant List |
Participant Contact Information
Josephine Rodriguez | jjr5x@uvawise.edu | University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign |
Products: Publications, Reports, Datasets, Presentations, Visualizations
Type | Products of NCEAS Research |
---|---|
Journal Article | Fernandez-Triana, Jose L.; Whitfield, James B.; Rodriguez, Josephine; Smith, M. Alex; Janzen, Daniel H.; Hallwachs, Winnie; Hajibabaei, Mehrdad; Burns, John; Solis, M. Alma; Brown, John W.; Cardinal, Sophia; Goulet, Henri; Herbert, Paul D.N. 2014. Review of apanteles sensu stricto (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Microgastrinae) from area de Conservacion Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica, with keys to all described species from Mesoamerica. Zookeys. Vol: 383. Pages 1-565. (Online version) |
Presentations | Janzen, Daniel H.; Rodriguez, Josephine. 2011. Reconstructing tropical biodiversity with DNA data and its implications for conservation. Ecological Society of America, Austin, TX, August 2011. |
Presentations | Melian, Carlos J.; Rodriguez, Josephine. 2011. Eco-evolutionary dynamics in super-networks. Mathematical Models in Ecology and Evolution (MMEE), Groningen, Netherlands, August 2011. |
Presentations | Melian, Carlos J.; Rodriguez, Josephine. 2011. Testing adaptive and non-adaptive radiations and biodiversity in supernetworks. 96th Annual ESA Meeting, Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, August. |
Journal Article | Quickie, Donald L. J.; Smith, M. Alex; Janzen, Daniel H.; Hallwachs, Winnie; Fernandez-Triana, Jose L.; Laurenne, Nina M; Zaldivar-Riveron, Alejandro; Shaw, Mark R; Broad, Gavin R; Klopfstein, Seraina; Shaw, Scott R; Hrcek, Jan; Hebert, Pual D. N; Miller, Scott E; Rodriguez, Josephine; Whitfield, James B.; Sharkey, Michael J; Sharanowski, Barbara J; Jussila, Reijo; Gauld, Ian D; Chesters, Douglas; Vogler, Alfried. 2012. Utility of the DNA barcoding gene fragment for parasitic wasp phylogeny (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonoidea): Data release and new measure of taxonomic congruence. Molecular Ecology Resources. Vol: 12(4). Pages 676-685. (Online version) |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine; Janzen, Daniel H.; Smith, M. Alex; Whitfield, James B. 2010. Phylogenies, food webs and finding them all: Integrating approaches to explore the diversity of parasitoid wasps. Evolution Meetings, Portland, OR, June 2010. |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine; Melian, Carlos J.; Hallwachs, Winnie; Janzen, Daniel H. 2011. Hyperdiverse and specialized parasitoid food webs. Ecological Society of America, Austin, TX, August 2011. |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine. 2011. Linking natural history and theory to study tropical insect diversity. EAWAG, Center for Ecology, Evolution and Biochemistry Seminar Series, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland, May 2011. |
Journal Article | Rodriguez, Josephine; Fernandez-Triana, Jose L.; Smith, M. Alex; Janzen, Daniel H.; Hallwachs, Winnie; Erwin, Terry L.; Whitfield, James B. 2012. Extrapolations from field studies and known faunas converge on dramatically increased estimates of global microgastrine parasitoid wasp species richness (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Insect Conservation and Diversity. Pages 1-7. (Online version) |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine. 2012. Phylogenies, food webs and finding them all: Exploring the hyperdiversity of microgastrine parasitoid wasps. Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology Colloquium, University of Nevada, Reno, September 2012. (Online version) |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine. 2012. Understanding the exceptional diversity of parasitic wasps. Biology Seminar, Siena College, Loudonville, NY, January 2012. |
Presentations | Rodriguez, Josephine. 2012. Understanding the exceptional diversity of parasitic wasps: Studies from microgastrinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) in the tropics. Seminars in Biology, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA, April 2012. |
Journal Article | Smith, M. Alex; Bertrand, Claudia; Crosby, Kate; Eveleigh, Eldon S.; Fernandez-Triana, Jose L.; Gibbs, Jason; Hajibabaei, Mehrdad; Hallwachs, Winnie; Hind, Katharine; Hrcek, Jan; Huang, Da-Wei; Janda, Milan; Janzen, Daniel H.; Li, Yanwei; Miller, Scott E; Packer, Laurence; Quickie, Donald L. J.; Ratnasingham, Sujeevan; Rodriguez, Josephine; Rougerie, Rodolphe; Shaw, Mark R; Sheffield, Cory; Stahlhut, Julie K.; Steinke, Dirk; Whitfield, James B.; Wood, Monty; Zhou, Xin. 2012. Wolbachia and DNA barcoding insects: Patterns, potential, and problems. PLoS ONE. Vol: 7(5). Pages e36514-e36514. (Online version) |
Journal Article | Smith, M. Alex; Fernandez-Triana, Jose L.; Eveleigh, Eldon S.; Goméz, J.; Guclu, C.; Hallwachs, Winnie; Hebert, Pual D. N; Hrcek, Jan; Janzen, Daniel H.; Mason, P. G.; Miller, Scott E; Quickie, Donald L. J.; Rodriguez, Josephine; Rougerie, Rodolphe; Shaw, Mark R; Várkonyi, G.; Ward, Darren F.; Whitfield, James B.; Zaldivar-Riveron, Alejandro. 2013. DNA barcoding and the taxonomy of Microgastrinae wasps (Hymenoptera, Braconidae): Impacts after eight years and nearly 20,000 sequences. Molecular Ecology Resources. Vol: 13(2). Pages 168-176. (Online version) |
Presentations | Whitfield, James B.; Rodriguez, Josephine. 2012. Evolution of host specificity in microgastrine braconid parasitoid wasps. Evolution 2012, First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology, Ottawa, ON, Canada, July 2012. |
"Understanding a diverse insect-parasitoid community: insights from synthesizing biodiversity inventory data from the tropics" is project ID: 12474