Population differentiation of Ammophila wasps using wing morphology
Habitat fragmentation has resulted in increasing environmental pressure on biodiversity. Solitary wasps, such as Ammophila pubescens and Ammophila sabulosa, are often overlooked despite being threatened by loss of habitat from increasing fragmentation of sandy heathlands. In this study, I used wing...
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| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165748 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | Habitat fragmentation has resulted in increasing environmental pressure on biodiversity. Solitary wasps, such as Ammophila pubescens and Ammophila sabulosa, are often overlooked despite being threatened by loss of habitat from increasing fragmentation of sandy heathlands. In this study, I used wing morphological traits of size and venation pattern as biomarkers to study sexual size dimorphism and the impact of the environment on each species. Ammophila specimens measured in the study were either self-collected in the field or are specimens from the London Natural History Museum collection (ntotal = 320).
I find significant female-biased sexual size dimorphism in both species, which may be attributed to large investment of parental care from female wasps. There is no statistically significant difference in wing size between populations from different geographic regions in both species, suggesting that there is no significant difference in resource availability between regions. For wing venation patterns, there is significant difference between regions for both species, except for between South and Southeast for A. sabulosa. This may be due to difference in dispersal ability, such that breeding adults of A. sabulosa may be better able to disperse between the South and Southeast region, or due to the presence of small breeding sites between habitat patches, thus still allowing for continuity of gene flow between regions.
Future work may include looking at wing shape difference between species or sex, as this impacts dispersal ability, or a study into wing pattern asymmetry as an indicator of long-term environmental disturbances on wasps.
Keywords: sexual size dimorphism, anthropogenic disturbance, habitat loss, population structure, geometric morphometrics. |
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