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August 2013 - present
Publications
Publications (47)
The identification of spider species presents many challenges, since in most cases the characters used are from genital structures that are only fully developed in the adult stage, hence the identification of immatures is most often not possible. Additionally, these structures usually also present some intra-specific variability, which in some case...
Components of the same structure or characters of the same individual might respond differently to natural and sexual selective pressures, showing complex morphological patterns. Besides, studying interactions between species plays a crucial role in understanding the diversification of sex-linked phenotypes. Specifically, when two closely related s...
The Drosophila wing is a structure shared by males and females with the primary function of flight. However, in males, wings are also used to produce songs or visual displays during courtship. Understanding the genetic architecture underlying wing variation within and between the sexes is central to predicting the possible outcomes of evolutionary...
Reproductive interference (RI) can occur when two related species coexist in sympatry, involving sexual attraction, mating, and even hybridization between heterospecifics. Consequently, reproductive key characters of these species may suffer morphological shifts in sympatry to avoid the success of heterospecific sexual interactions, a phenomenon kn...
Zaprionus indianus Gupta (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is a fly species native to the Afrotropical biogeographic region that expanded its geographical distribution to the American continent around 1999. This fly lays eggs, feeds, and develops on a wide variety of fruits colonized by yeasts and bacteria, as well as on ripe, non‐damaged soft‐skinned fruit...
The evolution of insects inhabiting arid environments is heavily shaped by resource scarcity and temperature. Ecological interdependence could be tight and complex as in the model cactus–yeast–Drosophila. Cactophilic species of Drosophila (Diptera: Drosophilidae) differ in their preference for the type of breeding resources and life‐history traits...
The Drosophila wing is a structure shared by males and females with the main function of flight. However, in males, wings are also used to produce songs, or visual displays during courtship. Thus, observed changes in wing phenotype depend on the interaction between sex-specific selective pressures and the genetic and ontogenetic restrictions impose...
1. We assessed the host‐related niche breadth for D. koepferae and D. buzzatii, a pair of sibling cactophilic species with contrasting backgrounds of host use. We tested for the ‘Jack of all trades‐ Master of none’ scenario predicting a more evident exhibition in D. buzzatii rather than in the supposedly specialist D. koepferae.
2. Additionally, us...
The mite Macrocheles subbadius (Berlese) (Acari: Macrochelidae) is recorded
for the first time in Argentina, associated to the cactophilic fly Drosophila koepferae
Fontdevila & Wasserman (Diptera: Drosophilidae) from San Agustín de Valle Fértil, province
of San Juan.
The morphological variation of workers is a phenomenon related to a colony context. We have studied body size and fat body morphology in foragers of Scaptotrigona jujuyensis during different periods of the foraging season. In workers which forage at the start of season the number of oenocytes was lower than that of the remaining groups. Cytological...
A wide spectrum of song complexity has been documented in a broad range of animal taxa. However, the underlying processes shaping acoustic differences are still poorly understood. Empirical and theoretical studies suggest that different song parameters may be subject to different tempos and modes of evolution, resulting in a complex combination of...
A wide spectrum of song complexity has been documented in a broad range of animal taxa. However, the underlying processes shaping acoustic differences are still poorly understood. Empirical and theoretical studies suggest that different song parameters may be subject to different tempos and modes of evolution, resulting in a complex combination of...
Genital morphology in animals with internal fertilization is considered to be among the fastest evolving traits. Sexual selection is often proposed as the main driver of genital diversification but the exact selection mechanisms involved are usually unclear. In addition, the mechanisms operating may differ even between pairs of sibling species. We...
While grasslands, one of Earth’s major biomes, are known for their close evolutionary ties with ungulate grazers, these habitats are also paramount to the origins and diversification of other animals. Within the primarily South American spider subfamily Amaurobioidinae (Anyphaenidae), several species are found living in the continent’s grasslands,...
Closely related species often differ in the signals involved in sexual communication and mate recognition. Determining the factors influencing signal quality (i.e. signal's content and conspicuousness) provides an important insight into the potential pathways by which these interspecific differences evolve. Host specificity could bias the direction...
The cactophilic flies Drosophila buzzatii and Drosophila koepferae are generally each associated with a different host cactus, although resource sharing can occur in regions of sympatry. Host choice has been shown to affect several fitness-related traits, but the mechanisms determining it are poorly understood. We investigate how alternative cacti...
Drosophila buzzatii and D. koepferae are sibling cactophilic species. The former breeds primarily on prickly pears (genus Opuntia) whereas the latter breeds on columnar cacti of the genera Cereus and Trichocereus, although with certain degree of niche overlapping. We examined the interspecific differences in diurnal temporal patterns of adult emerg...
Background:
Taxonomic descriptions are traditionally composed in natural language and published in a format that cannot be directly used by computers. The Exploring Taxon Concepts (ETC) project has been developing a set of web-based software tools that convert morphological descriptions published in telegraphic style to character data that can be...
Closely related organisms with transoceanic distributions have long been the focus of historical biogeography, prompting the question of whether long-distance dispersal, or tec-tonic-driven vicariance shaped their current distribution. Regarding the Southern Hemisphere continents, this question deals with the break-up of the Gondwanan landmass, whi...
Table A. Information for tissue samples and GenBank accession codes for sequences. Table B. Primers used for PCR. Table C. Partitioning scheme and nucleotide substitution models for phylogenetic analyses. Table D. Estimates of net evolutionary divergence. Table E. Mean rates for molecular markers. Table F. BioGeoBEARS outputs based on the *BEAST sp...
Under the preference-performance hypothesis, natural selection will favor females that choose oviposition sites that optimize the fitness of their offspring. Such a preference-performance relationship may entail important consequences mainly on fitness-related traits. We used the well-characterized cactus-Drosophila system to investigate the reprod...
2015). Chasing ghosts: the phylogeny of Amaurobioidinae ghost spiders (Araneae, Anyphaenidae). —Zoologica Scripta, 00, 000–000. The family Anyphaenidae, also known as ghost spiders, includes a diverse array of nocturnal cursorial spiders that actively hunt on vegetation. The family is mostly distributed in the Americas and has been traditionally di...
The preference–performance relationship in plant–insect interactions is a central
theme in evolutionary ecology. Among many insects, eggs are vulnerable and larvae
have limited mobility, making the choice of an appropriate oviposition site one of the most
important decisions for a female. We investigated the evolution of oviposition preferences
in...
Maternal decisions, like the choice of a site for laying eggs, have important ecological and evolutionary implications. In the present study, we investigated variation, both within- and between- populations in oviposition site preference in a collection of isofemale lines derived from three Drosophila melanogaster Meigen natural populations of west...
Acropsopilio chilensis Silvestri, 1904 (Eupnoi: Caddidae: Acropsopilioninae), is recorded for Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile. This is the first harvestman species recorded for the Juan Fernández Archipelago and also the first extra-continental record for this species. During the comparison with continental co-specific specimens, some previously unkn...
The evolution of cactophily in the genus Drosophila was a major ecological transition involving over a hundred species in the Americas that acquired the capacity to cope with a variety of toxic metabolites evolved as feeding deterrents in Cactaceae. D. buzzatii and D. koepferae are sibling cactophilic species in the D. repleta group. The former is...
Increasing evidence from multiple animal systems
suggests that genital evolution and diversification are
driven by rapid and strong evolutionary forces. Particularly,
the morphology of male genital structures is considered
to be among the fastest evolving traits in animal
groups with internal fertilization. In this study, we investigated
patterns o...
We review the spider genus Philisca Simon, an endemic of the southern forests in Chile and Argentina, and present a phylogenetic analysis including 15 species, of which five are newly described (P. atrata, P. robinson, P. viernes, P. pizarroi and P. robusta), together with other 98 representatives of the family Anyphaenidae. Four species names are...
Drosophila buzzatii and D. koepferae coexist in the arid lands of southern South America and exploit different types of cactus as breeding hosts. The former prefers to lay eggs on the rotting pads of prickly pears (genus Opuntia) whereas D. koepferae exhibits greater acceptance for columnar cacti (e.g., Echinopsis terschekii). Here, we demonstrate...
The cactus–yeast–Drosophila model system provides an excellent opportunity
to investigate the significance of ecological factors in evolution. D. buzzatii and D. koe-
pferae are sister species, with partially overlapping distribution ranges and a certain degree
of habitat overlap. The main breeding and feeding resources of D. buzzatii are the decay...
The choice of egg laying site and progeny's performance in a rearing site are important components of habitat selection. Despite the huge amount of genetic, morphological, behavioral and physiological data regarding Drosophila melanogaster Meigen and D. simulans Sturtevant, oviposition site preferences remain poorly known. We investigated resource...
The inversion polymorphisms of the cactophilic Drosophila buzzatti Patterson and Wheeler (Diptera: Drosophilidae) were studied in new areas of its distribution in Argentina. A total of thirty-eight natural populations, including 29 from previous studies, were analyzed using multiple regression analyses. The results showed that about 23% of total va...
The Drosophila repleta group encompasses an ensemble of species that inhabit desertic areas that are inhospitable to other drosophilids. These species have a tractable ecology, as they breed and feed on necrotic tissues of a wide diversity of species of Cactaceae, with a certain degree of host specificity, which makes them suitable models to invest...
Cactophilic Drosophila flies are excellent models to study adaptation to a relatively narrow spectrum of potential host plants and host-driven evolutionary diversification. Previous studies suggested a complex genetic architecture of wing and male genital morphology in phylogenetically basal species of the D. buzzatii cluster. In this work, we inve...
The term ecotoxicology is defined it as "the branch of toxicology concerned with the study of toxic effects, caused by natural or synthetic pollutants, to the constituents of ecosystems, animal (including human), vegetable and microbial, in an integral context". Ecotoxicology is alleged to be the integration of toxicology and ecology or, "ecology i...
As in most insect groups, host plant shifts in cactophilic Drosophila represent environmental challenges as flies must adjust their developmental programme to the presence of different chemical compounds and/or to a microflora that may differ in the diversity and abundance of yeasts and bacteria. In this context, wing morphology provides an excelle...
In the genus Drosophila (Diptera: Drosophilidae), interspecific hybridization is a rare phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a certain degree of introgression between the cactophilic siblings Drosophila buzzatii Patterson & Wheeler and Drosophila koepferae Fontdevila & Wasserman. In this article, we analyzed larval viability and developmen...
In the present study, we investigated the intrinsic mortality patterns in Drosophila buzzatii lines selected for wing length (WL) and developmental time (DT), two traits involved in a trade off. Three sets of lines were selected for reduced developmental time, the first was also selected for shortened wing length (S lines), i.e., in the same direct...