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Wing reduction in cockroaches (Blattaria)
Kotyk, Michael ; Kotyková Varadínová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Nedvěd, Oldřich (referee)
My bachelor thesis deals with the wing reduction in cockroaches and the causes of its appearance. Order Blattaria is the insect order with the third highest occurrence of apterous and brachypterous species. Yet still only a minimum of publications were performed to cover this topic. Therefore, I analyse in several chapters both the types of wing reduction as well as generally accepted theories explaining the reasons of its evolution in insects. Then I discuss their relevance in the case of order Blattaria. Namely, ecological theories, regarding interactions of insect and its habitat, and physiological theories, describing life history trade- offs and constrains related to wings. I present examples of species to every theory which are probably concerned. There are also examples of species which maintain the macropterous state, although no longer capable of flight and theories that explain the retention of macroptery. As a part of the thesis I have also included a phylogenetic tree of cockroaches with marked wing condition for each sex, which outlines evolutionary trends of individual groups within the order. Keywords: Blattaria, reduction, macroptery, brachyptery, aptery, habitat, life history trade-offs
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Growth and ontogeny of sexual size dimorphism in Cetoniinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)
Vendl, Tomáš ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Saska, Pavel (referee)
6 Abstract Due to its effect on fitness and many biological processes is body size one of the most important attribute of organisms. Body size is positively correlated with fecundity in insects and other ectotherms. Growth, which determine body size, is therefore crucial feature of animals. Study of growth can elucidate some aspects of body size evolution. Unfortunatelly, many insects life-history studies do not consider its complexity, especially the existence of distinct larval instars. Inaccurate record of growth trajectory may result also in biased differences in growth between sexually dimorphic sexes. Aim of this thesis is to record growth trajectories of two flower beetle species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae). These growth trajectories enable to define proximate mechanisms of growth with regard to individual instars. Determination of developmental mechanisms of sexual size dimorphism is another goal of this study. The growth is clearly divided in three distinct periods. In each individual period (i.e. instar) is described by asymptotic curve. The instars are not independent on each other - the growth in following instar is influenced by growth in previous. There are no differences in growth characteristics between sexes. Sexual size dimorphism is caused by differences in growth rate between...
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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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Larval morphology of Goliathini (Coleoptera: Cetoniinae) and its contribution towards the understanding of the group's evolution.
Kouklík, Ondřej ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Skuhrovec, Jiří (referee)
1 Abstract Currently there are almost 4000 described species of rose chafers (Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae) but larvae of less than 200 species are described. In this work we studied larval morphology of 86 species belonging to 58 genera with focus on the tribe Goliathini. The larvae of 21 genera were studied for the first time. 77 morphological characters on head, mouth parts, legs and thoracal and abdominal segments were studied. This resulted into large matrix of morphological characters, which were further tested in separate phylogenetical analyses. A checklist of studied characters and their states and also large databasis of photographs of the characters are also amongst the results of the thesis. Five independent datasets were tested, three were based singly on morphology, one on molecular sequences and one on a combined dataset. The phylogenetic analysis was made by three methods, maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and bayesian interference. Eleven different phylogenetic trees were obtained as a result, based on which we tried to reconstruct the relationships between the inner groups of Cetoniinae with focus on relationship of subtribes of tribe Goliathini. Monophyly of the tribe Goliathini as well as some other groups could not be confirmed, as well as the alleged basal position of the genus...
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Wing reduction in cockroaches (Blattaria)
Kotyk, Michael ; Kotyková Varadínová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Nedvěd, Oldřich (referee)
My bachelor thesis deals with the wing reduction in cockroaches and the causes of its appearance. Order Blattaria is the insect order with the third highest occurrence of apterous and brachypterous species. Yet still only a minimum of publications were performed to cover this topic. Therefore, I analyse in several chapters both the types of wing reduction as well as generally accepted theories explaining the reasons of its evolution in insects. Then I discuss their relevance in the case of order Blattaria. Namely, ecological theories, regarding interactions of insect and its habitat, and physiological theories, describing life history trade- offs and constrains related to wings. I present examples of species to every theory which are probably concerned. There are also examples of species which maintain the macropterous state, although no longer capable of flight and theories that explain the retention of macroptery. As a part of the thesis I have also included a phylogenetic tree of cockroaches with marked wing condition for each sex, which outlines evolutionary trends of individual groups within the order. Keywords: Blattaria, reduction, macroptery, brachyptery, aptery, habitat, life history trade-offs
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Growth and ontogeny of sexual size dimorphism in Cetoniinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)
Vendl, Tomáš ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Saska, Pavel (referee)
6 Abstract Due to its effect on fitness and many biological processes is body size one of the most important attribute of organisms. Body size is positively correlated with fecundity in insects and other ectotherms. Growth, which determine body size, is therefore crucial feature of animals. Study of growth can elucidate some aspects of body size evolution. Unfortunatelly, many insects life-history studies do not consider its complexity, especially the existence of distinct larval instars. Inaccurate record of growth trajectory may result also in biased differences in growth between sexually dimorphic sexes. Aim of this thesis is to record growth trajectories of two flower beetle species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae). These growth trajectories enable to define proximate mechanisms of growth with regard to individual instars. Determination of developmental mechanisms of sexual size dimorphism is another goal of this study. The growth is clearly divided in three distinct periods. In each individual period (i.e. instar) is described by asymptotic curve. The instars are not independent on each other - the growth in following instar is influenced by growth in previous. There are no differences in growth characteristics between sexes. Sexual size dimorphism is caused by differences in growth rate between...
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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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