Skip to main content
Entomology 2021 Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Presentation Icons
In-Person
In-Person
Livestream
Livestream
On-Demand
On-Demand
Student Competition
Student Competition
Video Chat
Video Chat
Ticketed Event
Ticketed Event
Poster Icons
Student Competition
Student Competition
In-Person
In-Person
Poster
Poster
On-Demand
On-Demand
Back
Q&A

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Member Symposium

Tephritidae Systematics, Diagnostics, Phylogeny, Evolution & Natural History

Diverse drivers of diversification in Blepharoneura (Tephritidae)

Tuesday, November 2, 2021
2:05 PM – 2:20 PM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 205-207
In-Person
What drives diversification? Blepharoneura is a diverse Neotropical genus of highly host-specific morphologically cryptic species specific to host plants in the Cucurbitaceae. Species in one diverse Blepharoneura lineage feed on flower calyces and usually specialize on either male or female flowers. Despite such extreme specialization, multiple sympatric species can infest the same host, apparently without competing. Diversification rates are highly variable among lineages. We see high rates of diversification in some lineages that suffer high mortality due to parasitoids. In those lineages, diversification is often associated with host-shifts, perhaps driven by selection for escape from parasitoids. In some lineages with lower rates of diversification, parasitoids rarely attack flies. In those lineages, host-shifts are rare. Geography appears to be a consistent factor associated with diversification of mtDNA lineages, but not necessarily with speciation. Some geographically widespread species comprise multiple mtDNA lineages that diverged more than two million years ago in allopatry (without shifts in host-plant use). Those flies, when sympatric, are fully interbreeding, which suggests that courtship behaviors either have not diverged, or do not represent important barriers to reproduction. In other lineages without a history of host-shifts, we have observed geographic variation in courtship behaviors that may drive diversification in allopatry. Thus, we suggest that diverse factors (e.g., parasitism, host-shifts, geography, and sexual selection) may drive diversification in Blepharoneura.