Mottl-Ecosphere-TropicalArborealAnts_TreeFelling_PNG2019

Datafile containing information about arboreal ants from succession series in the montane tropical forest in Papua New Guinea. Data were obtained using felling of all trees with DBH>5 and collection of all foragers and nests. In total, 9 plot of 0.1ha in 3 successional stages were sampled. List AllRecords contains information about all tree and presence/absence information of ant species. In addition, there is information about environmental variables for each tree. List NestRecords contains information about the number of ant nests of each ant species in each tree and environmental variables linked to them

Low host specificity and abundance of frugivorous lepidoptera in the lowland rain forests of Papua New Guinea.

We studied a community of frugivorous Lepidoptera in the lowland rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Rearing revealed 122 species represented by 1,720 individuals from 326 woody plant species. Only fruits from 52% (171) of the plant species sampled were attacked. On average, Lepidoptera were reared from 1 in 89 fruits and a kilogram of fruit was attacked by 1.01 individuals. Host specificity of Lepidoptera was notably low: 69% (33) of species attacked plants from >1 family, 8% (4) fed on single family, 6% (3) on single genus and 17% (8) were monophagous. The average kilogram of fruits was infested by 0.81 individual from generalist species (defined here as feeding on >1 plant genus) and 0.07 individual from specialist species (feeding on a single host or congeneric hosts). Lepidoptera preferred smaller fruits with both smaller mesocarp and seeds. Large-seeded fruits with thin mesocarp tended to host specialist species whereas those with thick, fleshy mesocarp were often infested with both specialist and generalist species. The very low incidence of seed damage suggests that pre-dispersal seed predation by Lepidoptera does not play a major role in regulating plant populations via density-dependent mortality processes outlined by the Janzen-Connell hypothesis

Ultraconserved elements (UCEs) resolve the phylogeny of Australasian smurf-weevils.

Weevils (Curculionoidea) comprise one of the most diverse groups of organisms on earth. There is hardly a vascular plant or plant part without its own species of weevil feeding on it and weevil species diversity is greater than the number of fishes, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals combined. Here, we employ ultraconserved elements (UCEs) designed for beetles and a novel partitioning strategy of loci to help resolve phylogenetic relationships within the radiation of Australasian smurf-weevils (Eupholini). Despite being emblematic of the New Guinea fauna, no previous phylogenetic studies have been conducted on the Eupholini. In addition to a comprehensive collection of fresh specimens, we supplement our taxon sampling with museum specimens, and this study is the first target enrichment phylogenomic dataset incorporating beetle specimens from museum collections. We use both concatenated and species tree analyses to examine the relationships and taxonomy of this group. For species tree analyses we present a novel partitioning strategy to better model the molecular evolutionary process in UCEs. We found that the current taxonomy is problematic, largely grouping species on the basis of similar color patterns. Finally, our results show that most loci required multiple partitions for nucleotide rate substitution, suggesting that single partitions may not be the optimal partitioning strategy to accommodate rate heterogeneity for UCE loci

Overlap of Lepidoptera species in frugivorous (this study) and leaf-chewer (different study, [68]) guilds.

<p>Overlap of Lepidoptera species in frugivorous (this study) and leaf-chewer (different study, [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0171843#pone.0171843.ref068" target="_blank">68</a>]) guilds.</p

Phylogenetic tree results of the Eupholini weevils, branch colors correspond to species clades: LEFT: SVDQuartets species tree.

<p>Dashed lines denote nodes that differ between trees. Node values indicate bootstrap support values. RIGHT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees. Node values indicate support values of MrBayes posterior (minus burn-in) used as ASTRAL bootstrap replicates.</p

Linear regression of logit proportion of UCE loci captured verses specimen age.

<p>Number of UCE loci and specimen age for; <i>Xylocopa</i> (carpenter bees) from Blaimer et al. 2016, <i>Aphelocoma</i> (scrub-jays) from McCormack et al. 2016, Eupholini (smurf weevils) from this study. Specimen age is in years from when individual was first collected and preserved. Regressions show a decline in the number of UCE loci captured as specimen age increases, the rate of decline is similar between studies.</p

LEFT: ASTRAL species tree derived from multi-partitioned RAxML trees.

<p>Node values indicate bootstrap support values. RIGHT: ASTRAL species tree, input trees derived from multi-partitioned MrBayes analyses of individual gene trees. Node values are derived from posterior distribution of MrBayes trees (minus burn-in) where each sample of the MCMC generation represents a bootstrap sample to ASTRAL.</p

Mean volume for whole fruit, mesocarp and seeds (a) and fleshiness (b) in plant species attacked and not attacked by Lepidoptera.

<p>The differences between attacked and non-attacked species are significant (whole fruit: U _106,151 = 5624, Z = 3.064, P = 0.002; mesocarp: U _106,151 = 5828, Z = 2.69, P = 0.007; seeds: U _106,151 = 5346, Z = 3.574, P < 0.0010), (b) Fleshiness (i.e. proportion of mesocarp in whole fruit) did not have significant effect on infestation (U _106,151 = 6839, Z = 0.83, P = 0.401).</p

The number of plant species attacked (black bar) and not attacked (white bar) by frugivorous Lepidoptera in samples categorized by (a) fruit weight and (b) the number of fruits.

<p>The number of plant species attacked (black bar) and not attacked (white bar) by frugivorous Lepidoptera in samples categorized by (a) fruit weight and (b) the number of fruits.</p

Relationship between seed and mesocarp volume for 268 plant species attacked and not attacked by Lepidoptera.

<p>Relationship between seed and mesocarp volume for 268 plant species attacked and not attacked by Lepidoptera.</p