Weevils of Sonora: Discovering species distributions and historical patterns of symbiont associations

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses a gap in our understanding of insect biodiversity within and adjacent to the southwestern United States. The Mexican State of Sonora shares a 375 miles-long border with Arizona, and has a large biodiversity of insect fauna that remains very poorly known. In the case of beetles in the weevil superfamily, less than 100 species have been documented, yet nearly 1,000 species - many of them new to science - are expected to occur in Sonora. Weevils are economically important; thousands of species have either detrimental (crop pest) or beneficial (biocontrol) ecosystem impacts. This project will create a new collaboration between researchers and students at Arizona State University and two Mexican universities, with the goal of thoroughly sampling the weevil diversity of Sonora and publishing the results in a dynamic and openly accessible on-line checklist. Longstanding questions about the evolution of weevil diversity, and its relationship to their gut-inhabiting bacteria and host plant diets, will also be addressed. The project will mentor two doctoral students and undergraduate students in the concepts and methods of modern systematics and biodiversity data science. A multi-faceted education and outreach program will include the creation of a flashcard-based K-3 textbook on regional insect diversity and functional natural history. The project includes an extensive field work and collection curation component, expected to yield at least 5,000 unique species/locality instances of research-ready specimens in the weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea). Field-to-data dissemination workflows will benefit from further improving the Symbiota software platform, with new options to publish data packages to external journals. The checklist will include updated taxonomic names, all specimens, species distribution maps, host plant records, images, species profile pages, and an interactive identification key to the Sonoran weevil genera as currently recognized. A well-structured metagenomics sequencing study of the gut content of more than 100 species in eight targeted weevil lineages will identify both their plant hosts and bacterial symbiont profiles. This dataset will facilitate the discovery of numerous symbiont clades, and test novel hypotheses regarding the relative impact of weevil phylogeny, biogeography, host associations, and other environmental gradients on the weevils' observed symbiont profiles This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.