Criminalistics Institute, Federal District Police Department, Brasília (DF), Brazil.
PPG Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília (DF), Brazil.
J Med Entomol. 2020 May 4;57(3):738-744. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjz211.
Competition influences the expression of morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits and also regulates ecological and evolutionary dynamics. This study aims to identify and characterize changes in wing morphology in response to intra- and interspecific competition in three necrophagous blowfly species. Using geometric morphometry, we analyzed 3,238 wings from Lucilia sericata (Meigen, 1826), Calliphora vicina Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830, and C. vomitoria (Linnaeus, 1758) raised under cloistered and pairwise conditions. The three species reacted similarly to intraspecific competition-reducing wing size with increased competition-but displayed contrasting patterns of response to interspecific competition. Lucilia sericata displayed a directional change in wing shape in response to an interspecific competitor, while C. vicina increased the scattering of individuals across the morphospace, and C. vomitoria displayed no significant change in response to the same stimulus. Our results show that the same stimulus yields distinctive responses; thus, different competition-related strategies are expected to occur in the three species.
竞争影响形态、生理和行为特征的表达，也调节生态和进化动态。本研究旨在鉴定和描述三种腐生性蝇种（丽蝇科）对种内和种间竞争的翅膀形态变化。我们使用几何形态测量法分析了在隔离和成对条件下饲养的丽蝇属（L. sericata）、麻蝇属（Calliphora vicina）和红头丽蝇（C. vomitoria）的 3238 只翅膀。这三个物种对种内竞争的反应相似——随着竞争的加剧，翅膀尺寸减小——但对种间竞争的反应模式却截然不同。丽蝇属对种间竞争表现出定向的翅膀形状变化，而麻蝇属则增加了个体在形态空间中的分散程度，而红头丽蝇对相同的刺激没有表现出显著的变化。我们的研究结果表明，相同的刺激会产生不同的反应，因此，三种物种中可能存在不同的与竞争相关的策略。
