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Projekt Druckansicht

Systematik und Evolution von Trigonopterus, einer hyperdiversen Gattung flugunfähiger Rüsselkäfer aus Südostasien und dem West Pazifik

Antragsteller Dr. Alexander Riedel, seit 12/2017
Fachliche Zuordnung Systematik und Morphologie der Tiere
Evolution, Anthropologie
Förderung Förderung von 2009 bis 2021
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 141722937
 
Erstellungsjahr 2021

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

At the start of our project, Trigonopterus was a little-known genus of weevils containing 91 described species in need of revision. Neither their exceptionally high diversity in rainforest ecosystems of Melanesia had been appreciated, nor their high potential for use in fine-scaled biogeographic studies. In the course of our project, we have covered different aspects such as taxonomy, methods of species discovery, morphology, ecology, and biogeography, thus bringing Trigonopterus onto the world map of current zoological research. Our success has been substantiated e.g. by Minelli (2015, 2020) making extensive reference to our work, and numerous reports on our findings in public media. Thus, we have managed to provide a framework for additional studies. Once all obvious questions have been sufficiently covered, the evolution of this hyperdiverse genus may become a textbook example of a radiation rivaling the one of Hawaiian Drosophila or Caribbean Anolis. To date, we have sequence data representing 1.231 species of Trigonopterus at hand. This is a fantastic success beyond our expectations, since we began with only 80 species at the start of the project; at the end of phase 1 the landmark of 480 species was reached, at the end of phase 2 it was 800. Our expectation for phase 3 was to surpass 1.000. While there was no strict geographic order, phase 1 largely focused on Western Indonesia (Sundaland), phase 2 on Sulawesi, Australia and West Papua, and phase 3 largely on Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the West Pacific Islands. Thus, the geographical focus shifted from West to East, arriving at a well-balanced perspective of the biogeography.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

Zusatzinformationen

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