Trends and Dynamic Interactions Between Plant Phenology and and Insect Populations Studied
The
AABP team continues to work in association with Trond Larsen, Phil DeVries,
Juan Grados, Pedro Centeno, and field assistants on a very focused insect monitoring
and inventory project. This project involved four groups of insects:
1. Scarab beetles (Scarabidae:Coleoptera)
2. Nymphalid butterflies (Nymphalidae:Lepidoptera)
3. Hawkmoths (Sphingidae:Lepidoptera)
4. Waspmoths (Ctenuchinae:Lepidoptera)
The
AABP team believes that it is important to integrate studies of these
insect groups and their interactions with plants. One of our current
goals is to correlate potential trends and dynamic interactions between
plant phenology (flowering and fruiting patterns) and the populations
of these insect groups.
During the past several years, the AABP team collected 120 species of Sphingidae from three specific sites in the Amazon, the Upper Amazon, and the Andes Mountains). This is an amazing number since only 150 species are known for
ALL of Peru! The team has not completely finished processing all of the specimens they collected from the Ctenuchinae:Arctiidae (waspmoths, subfamily of the tiger moth family). However, the team currently has estimated that they collected 272 species of waspmoths. This total is a world record, surpassing the 250 species known from a site in Northeast Brazil.