%0 Journal Article
%T Thysanoptera biodiversity in the Neotropics
%A Laurence A. Mound
%J Revista de Biolog赤a Tropical
%D 2002
%I Universidad de Costa Rica
%X It is suggested that descriptive taxonomy of thrips must be integrated into biological studies if we are to understand patterns of evolutionary and ecological diversity. Collecting and describing new taxa is easy, but understanding their position in ecosystems and how they have contributed to the origin and maintenance of biological diversity is more important yet more difficult. Many authors fail to appreciate that individual thrips species are commonly highly polymorphic, both within and between sexes, with the result that 20% of species names and 30% of generic names are currently placed into synonymy. The biological significance of such polymorphism has been little studied, but the presence of large and small males in a species is presumed to indicate some form of male/male competition for resources; this is particularly common in fungus feeding species. Amongst phytophagous species, the recognition of the host plants on which thrips actually breed is a prerequisite to understanding patterns of diversity, some thrips lineages being associated with particular groups of plants whereas others exploit a diverse range of plants. Attempts to understand the diversity of thrips, including the application of cladistic methods, are severely limited by the lack of studies on the biology of individual species, although thrips exhibit a wide range of interesting biological phenomena, including various levels of sociality, gallinduction, specific pollination associations, virus transmission, and ectoparasitism Se ha sugerido que la taxonom赤a descriptiva de los tisanopteros (trips) debe integrarse dentro de los estudios biol車gicos si queremos ser capaces de entender los patrones de diversidad evolutiva y ecol車gica. Recolectar y describir nuevos datos es f芍cil, pero entender su posici車n en los ecosistemas y como ellos contribuyen al origen y mantenimiento de la diversidad biol車gica es m芍s importante y a迆n m芍s dif赤cil. Muchos autores han fallado al apreciar que es com迆n que las especies individuales de trips son altamente polim車rficas, tanto dentro como entre sexos, con el resultado de que el 20% de los nombres espec赤ficos y el 30% de los gen谷ricos son actualmente considerados como sinonimias. El significado biol車gico de tal polimorfimo ha sido poco estudiado, pero se presume que la presencia de machos grandes y peque os en una especie indica alguna forma de competencia entre machos por los recursos; lo cual es muy com迆n en las especies que se alimentan de hongos. Dentro de las especies fit車fagas, el reconocimiento de la planta hospedera sobre la cual los trips real
%K taxonomy
%K morpho-species
%K polymorphism
%K collaborative studies
%U http://www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0034-77442002000200008