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Larval morphology, phylogeography and automatic identification of chosen flower chafer beetles (Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae)
Vondráček, Dominik ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Bezděk, Aleš (referee) ; Kundrata, Robin (referee)
Currently, over 4.300 species of flower chafer beetles (Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae) are described in more than 485 genera, with the number of genera, species and subspecies increasing by dozens of new taxa each year. Especially in the past, some of the species descriptions were relatively vague and short operating only with the coloration of beetles, or with extremely subtle differences on the male genitalia without any support of other data and analyses. In this dissertation, I focused on the use of various data and methodological approaches that can help understand the evolutionary processes within this group and its complicated taxonomy and systematics, which is also still very unstable even at higher taxonomic ranks. In two works we studied the morphology of immature stages of flower chafers and their bionomy. In the case of the Taenioderini tribe, whose immature stages were not known until then, we found surprisingly significant morphological variability in the eight described species, which is unusual in larval stages of flower chafers. In the second work, we focused on the genus Oxythyrea. We described the larvae of nine of the ten currently known species and confronted the obtained data with the already existing descriptions of the larvae of the Leucocelina subtribe, to which the studied...
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Methods for storing and archiving zoological tissue collections, and identification based on DNA barcoding
Aghová, Tatiana ; Benda, Petr ; Brejcha, Jindřich ; Dolejš, Petr ; Kyralová, Eva ; Mlíkovský, Jiří ; Moravec, Jiří ; Šanda, Radek ; Štundl, Jan ; Tkoč, Michal ; Vondráček, Dominik
Fulltext:  PDF; PDF; PDF; PDF
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Feeding strategies in geotrupids (Coleoptera: Geotrupidae)
Sommer, David ; Král, David (advisor) ; Vondráček, Dominik (referee)
The work summarizes the biology (life histories) of the family Geotrupidae. Historical findings are confronted with current knowledge. The study is focused mainly on food strategies within the family Geotrupidae, their evolutionary origin, differences across taxa within the family and the existence of certain trends within different taxa and family as a whole. The nutritional strategies of adults and larvae are compared, as well as the conditions that can lead to a changesin feedings strategies. The general section parts are devoted to taxonomy and phylogeny of the subfamilies within the family Geotrupidae, adult morphology and larvae and their geographical distribution. In the section part dedicated to the biology of individual subfamily, in addition to the feeding strategies, the biotopes of individual taxa, the presence or absence of parental care, and the knowledge of nesting behavior of beetles are listed. The primary nutritional strategy of the family is coprophagy, but the change in food strategies has occurred in this family several times independently. No trend within the family was traced. Changing the feeding strategy from cognition to phytophagy occurred only once in evolution, and in adults of the subfamily Lethrinae. Both obligatory and facultative saprophagies have evolved in the...
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Population structure of flower chafer Oxythyrea funesta (Poda, 1761) and phylogeny of the genus Oxythyrea Mulsant, 1842
Vondráček, Dominik ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Bezděk, Aleš (referee)
Eleven species are distinguished in the genus Oxythyrea Mulsant, 1842 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) nowadays. They are not divided into subspecies. Diversity of the genus is concentrated in the Mediterranean and Oxythyrea funesta (Poda, 1761) inhabit a wide area in the western Palearctic Region. It was observed in last decades, that O. funesta retreated from central Europe to south and then recolonized it back including new areas in northern regions. Master thesis is focused on resolving population structure of O. funesta and partial phylogeny of the genus Oxythyrea using molecular genetic methods. 145 individuals of O. funesta and 15 individuals of five other species of the genus Oxythyrea appear in analysis. We acquired sequences of mitochondrial genes cytochrome oxidase I (807 bp), cytochrome b (381 bp) and nuclear gene internal transcribed spacer 1 (946 bp) from these specimens. The results of phylogenetic analysis confirmed so far the only one existing interpretation of relationships within the genus Oxythyrea based on morphological data. We also confirmed complicated relationships between O. funesta and O. pantherina, which also appear in the historical development of their taxonomy. We detected different genetic lineage in Sicily, southern Italy and Tunisia using phylogenetic trees and haplotype...
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