Fenologia dos vôos de acasalamento em formigas tropicais

• Ano de defesa: 2006
• Autor(a) principal: Nascimento, Ivan Cardoso do
• Orientador(a): Lúcia, Terezinha Maria Castro Della
• Banca de defesa: Delabie, Jacques Hubert Charles , Ferreira, Paulo Sérgio Fiúza , Lino Neto, José , Campos, Lúcio Antonio de Oliveira
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Doutorado em Entomologia
• Departamento: Ciência entomológica; Tecnologia entomológica
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: Formicidae; Amostragem; Fenologia reprodutiva
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Formicidae; Sampling; Reproductive phenology
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ZOOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/939

The phenology of mating in ants was studied in two localities of Brazil: Viçosa, State of Minas Gerais and Ilhéus, State of Bahia. In Viçosa, the flight activity of males of Labidus (Ecitoninae) was examined, through an exhaustive series of collects carried out using a light trap between 1981 and 1998. During this experiment, 368 males in three species were collected: Labidus nero, L. coecus and L. praedator. It is the first time that the occurrence of three species of this genus in a single locality is recorded, each one showing a marked seasonality in their flight activity. This asynchrony suggests that this seasonality acts as a mechanism of reproductive isolation between these species. The occurrence of L. nero, as well as diverse recent records of workers of L. mars in the same locality, led us to conclude that L. nero is in fact a junior synonymous of L. mars. At Ilheus, daily collections using light traps during all the year of 2004 have been carried out. Specimens of Ecitoninae have been studied separately, being recorded a total of 1,285 males distributed in 15 species. Most of them had their reproductive period between February and November. Synchronism in flight activity was observed for species of Neivamyrmex and Eciton, while segregation occurred in Labidus, similarly to what has been observed for this genus at Viçosa. A model was developed in order to explain abundance of winged mates along the year, based on the factors temperature and rain, and on interactions between the both. Only the factor temperature was significant. This is probably related to the foundation mode of new colonies known as fission for the Ecitoninae. When the whole set of species of Formicidae at Ilheus is considered 140,450 individuals distributed in 228 morpho-species were collected. In 27 species that were analyzed (the more frequent in the observations), mating flight activity is verified in at least eight months over the year, with its higher intensity in November. About half of these species had winged mates flying during five to eight months over the year, phenomenon that probably depends on small variations of average temperatures that occur along the year at Ilhéus. It was verified that rainfall is also necessary, however, being itself insufficient to promote flight activity in most of the species. This probably depends on the mechanisms of colony foundation proper to each one of the species that have been studied.