Understanding a diverse insect-parasitoid community: insights from synthesizing biodiversity inventory data from the tropics

• Josephine Rodriguez

Abstract
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).