Evolution of thermal tolerance and size of the geographic range in closely related species of water beetles

• Autores: Amparo Hidalgo Galiana
• Directores de la Tesis: Ignacio Ribera Galán (dir. tes.), Julio A. Rozas Liras (dir. tes.), Alexandra Cieslak (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2014
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Alfonso G. Navas Sánchez (presid.), Marta Riutort Leon (secret.), Garth N. Foster (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Química
    • Bioquímica
      • Proteínas
  • Ciencias de la vida
    • Biología de insectos (entomología)
      • Ecología de los insectos
      • Fisiología de los insectos
      • Taxonomía de los insectos
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en:  TDX  Dipòsit Digital de la UB 
• Resumen

  • This thesis studies a group of aquatic beetles (Agabus brunneus complex) that present important differences in the size of their geographic ranges. This complex is composed by an insular species (A. rufulus), a continental species with restricted range (A. ramblae) and another continental species (A. brunneus) that posses a wide range of distribution (A. brunneus) with the aim of study the factors implied in those differences. For this purpose we integrated the phylogeny/ phylogeography of the group and the evolution of the ecological niche together with morphological study and thermal tolerance of species. This complex of species diversified at the end of Pleistocene in Iberian Peninsula probably after the colonization of A. ramblae from Morocco. One of the resultant species (A. brunneus) at some point of the diversification acquired the ability to resist colder temperatures and was able to disperse to colder climates. To understand range variability from another perspective we used population proteomics to analyse the response of several populations for A. ramblae and A. bruneus facing temperatures that they might experience on field. We decided to analyse the variability at several levels in two populations of (A. ramblae) when working with natural populations obtaining satisfactory results for the reproducibility of our experimental methodology. When we analysed globally two populations for each species (one from Morocco and one from Iberian peninsula for each) we saw that the diversification observed in the phylogeny was encompassed with changes at the proteomic response. The more common proteins identified belong to energetic metabolism and stress proteins. The latter were detected to express differentially between the two species studied, showing a different response to thermal stress. This work address the possibility of employing population proteomics in natural populations of non-model species and being able of recovering the stress response facing an environmental factor like temperature. We show as well that differences in range size can be encompassing with the acquisition of capacity to face thermal stress.