Fatores que propiciam a coabitação de cupinzeiros por diferentes espécies de cupins

• Ano de defesa: 2012
• Autor(a) principal: Marins, Alessandra
• Orientador(a): Souza, Og Francisco Fonseca de
• Banca de defesa: Yotoko, Karla Suemy Clemente , Louzada, Júlio Neil Cassa , Souza, Danival José de , Elliot, Simon Luke
• 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: Cupins; Cupinzeiros; Coabitação; Regra de Emery
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Termites; Termite mounds; Cohabitation
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/903

The nests built by eusocial insects are often exploited by opportunistic species. Many invader species are also eusocial, but rather than build their own nests, those species prefer to live inside structures built by other species. The nests built by termites (mounds), are often invaded by other termites species. The available records of these associations are relatively abundant; however, the very last review on the subject was published in 1986 by Grasse. Given this gap in the study of termite invasions, in this thesis we aim to: collect and organize the scattered information, and hypothesize in two case studies factors that may enhance termite invasion in termite mounds. For the review, we conducted: (i) a compilation of several papers on the subject, (ii) verification of possible patterns observed for the order Isoptera, and (iii) propose an establishment route for potential invader colonies; this study is presented as an article in chapter I of this thesis. The case studies are also presented as aritcles where the following questions were pursued: builder species can affect the number of invasive species in their nests? And the phylogenetic relatedness between invader species and host species can increase the likelihood for cohabitation between the two species? The analysis of the literature review revealed that the associations are more generically for host species and more specialists from invader species. In addition, host species that have their nests invaded more easily are those that offer a wide variety of nesting environment or food resources. The species that are more likely to be invaders are those that can find their food in mounds of other species, have great resource range and can sneak into the mound without being expelled by host individuals. We also verified that builder species can exert some in uence on invaders richness of their mounds, not only through mounds physical factors. We propose that this influence may occur due to the existence of host species that are also invader species, which can affect how that this species interacts with their invaders when they are hosts. Moreover, the phylogenetic relatedness between invader and host species does not affect the likelihood of these species to cohabit in the same mound. That is, we found no evidence that Emery's rule applies to the termite species sampled in this study. We also propose that it is possible that termite invaders that have greater adaptive advantage are those that do not inflict costs to the builder of the mound.