McCulloch Graham A, Waters Jonathan M
School of Biological Sciences The University of Queensland Brisbane Qld Australia.
Department of Zoology University of Otago Dunedin New Zealand.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Dec 12;8(2):953-960. doi: 10.1002/ece3.3713. eCollection 2018 Jan.
Researchers have long been intrigued by evolutionary processes that explain biological diversity. Numerous studies have reported strong associations between animal body size and altitude, but insect analyses have often yielded equivocal results. Here, we analyze a collection database of New Zealand's diverse endemic stonefly fauna (106 species across 21 genera) to test for relationships between altitude and plecopteran body size. This insect assemblage includes a variety of wing-reduced (26 spp) and fully winged (80 spp) taxa and covers a broad range of altitudes (0-2,000 m). We detected significant relationships between altitude and body size for wing-reduced, but not fully winged, stonefly taxa. These results suggest that, while the maintenance of flight apparatus might place a constraint on body size in some fully winged species, the loss of flight may free insects from this evolutionary constraint. We suggest that rapid switches in insect dispersal ability may facilitate rapid evolutionary shifts across a number of biological attributes and may explain the inconsistent results from previous macroecological analyses of insect assemblages.
长期以来，研究人员一直对解释生物多样性的进化过程很感兴趣。众多研究报告称，动物体型与海拔高度之间存在密切关联，但对昆虫的分析往往得出模棱两可的结果。在此，我们分析了一个关于新西兰多样的特有石蝇动物群（21个属的106个物种）的收集数据库，以测试海拔高度与襀翅目昆虫体型之间的关系。这个昆虫组合包括各种翅退化（26种）和全翅（80种）类群，涵盖了广泛的海拔范围（0 - 2000米）。我们发现，对于翅退化的石蝇类群，海拔高度与体型之间存在显著关系，但全翅石蝇类群则不然。这些结果表明，虽然飞行器官的保留可能会对一些全翅物种的体型构成限制，但飞行能力的丧失可能使昆虫摆脱这种进化限制。我们认为，昆虫扩散能力的快速转变可能会促进多种生物学特性的快速进化转变，并可能解释先前对昆虫组合进行宏观生态分析时得出的不一致结果。
