Influência de plantas hospedeiras na distribuição geográfica potencial de constrictotermes cyphergaster (insecta: isoptera) em um cenário de mudanças climáticas

Abstract

It is important to know the distribution of species and their interaction with different factors, being them, biotic, abiotic, dispersal and development ability mainly in studies involving the ecological niche. In this context, the climate plays an important role, besides being the most used factor in niches models studies. These models are used to predict the area of occurrence of a species over geographic space through statistical and computational techniques. They are based on the assumption that if a species can be found in certain weather conditions, then it must be able to survive and reproduce in all areas with the same conditions. However, biotic interactions may also be important in the distribution of species and this factor has been studied by some authors, but there are no studies investigating whether the termite-plant interaction is effective in the geographical distribution of Constrictotermes cyphergaster species and this is what is intended to verify in this work. This is a species of arboreal termites, common in Brazil and endemic of the Cerrado and Caatinga. Their nests are constructed preferably in species of tree-sized plants like Qualea grandiflora Mart., Annona crassiflora Mart., Caryocar brasiliense Camb., and Plathymenia reticulata Benth., in Cerrado; and Caatinga shrubs, as Croton blanchetianus Baill, Pilosocereus gounellei (FAC Weber), Caesalpinia pyramidalis Tul and Aspidosperma pyrifolium Mart.. Niche models were applied to these eight species of plants and the species of termite. For this, it was used data on the occurrence of termite obtained through literature and collections from the Environmental Information Reference Center for plants and Worldclim for current and future climate data. The modeling method was the Maxent and the evaluation of the models was through the AUC index. To estimate how much the climate or the potential distribution of host plants should affect the potential distribution of termite, it was used the analysis of paths. The results showed that in the future scenario of climate changes all species studied in this work will lose climate suitability and consequently their range, so it becomes important to devise strategies for the conservation of these species. It can also be observed that the potential distribution of host plants presented a greater contribution to the potential distribution of termite, with the climate as a secondary factor. The termite-plant and termite-climate-plant models showed the highest correlation and greater similarity. Therefore, it is noticed the importance of including the biotic interactions in the potential distribution models, since they can promote a refinement in the prediction of models.