Abstract
The parasitic caterpillars of Maculinea (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) need to be adopted and nursed by ants of the genus Myrmica (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Each Maculinea species is locally associated with one or a few main and often several secon- dary host species. To determine whether the parasite-host associations bear marks of cophylogenetic constraints, we reconstructed phylogenies of Maculinea and Myrmica using DNA sequence data. We searched for evidence of cospeciation with a tree- independent (ParaFit) and tree-based (TreeFitter) method. This did not reveal any indication of phylogenetic host tracking in Macu- linea. This agrees with earlier insights, which emphasise that as most of the potential host ant populations are never infested by Maculinea, the selective pressure of the butterflies on Myrmica is likely to be slight. Each Maculinea species also specialises on one or a few host plant species before adoption by ants. We suggest that Maculinea species have a substantial potential to accommodate evolutionarily to geographically changing ranges of potential Myrmica hosts, available at the oviposition sites of the butterflies. We use recently published evidence on geographically varying host ant species to discuss a suite of plausible scenarios of adaptive shifts to new Myrmica host species.
Highlights
Coevolution may be strictly defined as an evolutionary change in a trait of the individuals in one population in response to a trait of the individuals in a second population, followed by an evolutionary response by the individuals in the second population to the change in the individuals in the first population (Janzen, 1980; see Thompson, 2005)
Did Maculinea speciate in parallel with Myrmica diversification? This study aims to investigate whether the interaction of Maculinea with its Myrmica hosts has influenced its phylogeny
Known species groups were recovered as monophyletic: scabrinodis, lobicornis (M. lobicornis and M. sulcinodis), and rubra (M. rubra, M. ruginodis and M. arisana)
Summary
Coevolution may be strictly defined as an evolutionary change in a trait of the individuals in one population in response to a trait of the individuals in a second population, followed by an evolutionary response by the individuals in the second population to the change in the individuals in the first population (Janzen, 1980; see Thompson, 2005). For intimately associated parasites and hosts, where hosts have become allopatrically isolated, and parasites are unable to disperse to or survive on hosts phylogenetically distant to their natural host, coevolution may lead to cospeciation (Reed & Hafner, 1997). This is a process during which speciation in one group is paralleled by speciation in the other (Hafner & Nadler, 1988; Page, 1994; Hafner & Page, 1995; Page & Charleston, 1998). This is the case for Monogenea and fish (Desdevises et al, 2002), lice and passerine birds (Johnson et al, 2002), chewing lice and toucans (Weckstein, 2004), and chewing lice and penguins (Banks et al, 2006)
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