Using such quantitative functional trait to have a proxy of insect flight dispersion (for ecological questions) would allow us to complement and refine some ideas on insect functional composition ...especially when working in super diverse tropical environments with huge lack of natural history informations on many insect taxa.
That is precisely where the flight muscles are located. You should have a look at: Greenleaf, S. S., N. M. Williams, R. Winfree, and C. Kremen. 2007. Bee foraging ranges and their relationship to body size. Oecologia 153:589–596.
Hi Greg,
Interesting question. I have no idea if this trait could be a proxy of insect flight dispersion, so I'll follow this question.
Your question reminded me a recent paper: Roberto Keller (et al) used other morphological traits to have thorough insights into another important life strategy in ants. See: Evolution of thorax architecture in ant castes highlights trade-off between flight and ground behaviors, published in 2014 in eLife DOI: 10.7554/eLife.01539.001
Other criteria are more commonly used to evaluate dispersion capacity (e.g. wing length, wing shape, body mass...), especially in groups such as Odonata and Lepidoptera. If you search in the literature the combination of keywords such as Odonata+wing size+dispersion, you would find a lot of papers (sometimes with contrasting results), which may help you...
Amitiés
Thibaut
As far as I am aware, ITD measurements are more closely correlated with foraging distances rather than dispersal. The key paper is that of Sarah Greenleaf et al who look at this in relation to bee foraging
But why specifically 'Inter-tegula distances'? Probably 'thorax width' or 'mass' would make easier the comparison across taxa (when there are no tegaulae). However this would give only an estimate of thoracic size, which would overall be proportional to body size or mass. I guess that controlling for body mass would be necessary... and I agree that combinig this with e.g. wing size would be more ind¡formative...
Thanks a lot...working on Lepido, Coleo, Ortho, Hemi, Hymeno, Mante...let's say community level, I want to find the best (easy/time) option to have this information. All my best. Greg
That is precisely where the flight muscles are located. You should have a look at: Greenleaf, S. S., N. M. Williams, R. Winfree, and C. Kremen. 2007. Bee foraging ranges and their relationship to body size. Oecologia 153:589–596.
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