Spatial Variation in Body Size and Wing Dimorphism Correlates With Environmental Conditions in the Grasshopper Dichroplus vittatus (Orthoptera: Acrididae)

REMIS, MARIA I; ROSETTI, NATALIA

ENVIRONMENTAL ENTOMOLOGY

ENTOMOLOGICAL SOC AMER

Año: 2018 vol. 47 p. 519 - 526

0046-225X

Wing dimorphism occurs widely in insects and involves discontinuous variation in a wide variety of traits involvedin fight and reproduction. In the current study, we analyzed the spatial pattern of wing dimorphism and intraspecificmorphometric variation in nine natural populations of the grasshopper Dichroplus vittatus (Bruner; Orthoptera:Acrididae) in Argentina. Considerable body size differences among populations, between sexes and wing morphswere detected. As a general trend, females were larger than males and macropterous individuals showed increasedthorax length over brachypterous which can be explained by the morphological requirements for the developmentof flight muscles in the thoracic cavity favoring dispersal. Moreover, when comparing wing morphs, a higherphenotypic variability was detected in macropterous females. The frequency of macropterous individuals showednegative correlation with longitude and positive with precipitations, indicating that the macropterous morph is morefrequent in the humid eastern part of the studied area. Our results provide valuable about spatial variation of fullywinged morph and revealed geographic areas in which the species would experience greater dispersal capacity