The Study Of Correlations Of Species Diversity And Genetic Diversity In Plants And Acorn Weevils

The globe is now facing the rapid decline of biodiversity. Its possible ecological consequences have attracted the attention of scientists for its possible ecological consequences. Horizontal diversity includes species, functional traits and genetic diversity. Vertical diversity is the community trophic structure, which is number of trophic levels. Both horizontal diversity and vertical diversity play important role in ecosystem functions. The interaction between horizontal diversity and vertical diversity also affect the maintaining of community biodiversity and ecosystem functions. As the most important biological group in terrestrial ecosystem, plants and herbivorous insects represent two typical trophic levels. How plant species diversity and genetic diversity interact with each other and how they cascade to the relationship between species diversity and genetic diversity of insects?In this study, we applied plants and acorn weevils as the research objects of different trophic levels, using microsatellites as molecular makers, to study on the correlations among species diversity of plants, genetic diversity of Lithocarpus glaber, species diversity of acorn weevils and genetic diversity of Curculio bimaculatus in Gutian natural reserve. The results showed that:1) We found that there is significant negative correlation between evenness of plant community and average number of alleles in populations of Lithocarpus glaber. But there are no significant correlations among other diversity indexes. On the contrary, there is a significant positive correlation between diversity of species of Fagaceae and genetic diversity of Lithocarpus glaber. In detail, a. There are significantly positive correlations between the ln of the average number of alleles of Lithocarpus glaber and the Simpson index (R2=0.402, p<0.05), the In of average number of alleles of Lithocarpus glaber and the evenness of community (R2=0.31, p<0.05). There is also positive but not significant correlation between the In of average number of alleles of Lithocarpus glaber and the species richness of species of Fagaceae. b. There is positive but no significant correlations between expected heterozygosity of Lithocarpus glaber and diversity of species of Fagaceae.2) Species richness of acorn weevils showed no significant correlation with genetic diversity of Curculio bimaculatus.3) There are positive but not significant correlations between plant species diversity, diversity of species of Fagaceae and species richness of acorn weevils (p>0.1). There is no significantly positive correlation between species richness of acorn weevils and richness of species of Fagaceae (DBH>10cm), the correlations between Simpson index, evenness and species richness of acorn weevils are marginally significant (p<0.1).4) Genetic diversity of Lithocarpus glaber has significant negative correlations with species richness of acorn weevils.5) There is significant correlations between allelic richness of Curculio bimaculatus and dominance of species of Fagaceae (DBH>10cm). There are marginally significant correlations between allelic richness of Curculio bimaculatus and abundance, diversity of species of Fagaceae (DBH>10cm).6) There are no significant correlations between genetic diversity (allelic richness, expected heterozygosity) of Lithocarpus glaber and genetic diversity (allelic richness, expected heterozygosity) of Curculio bimaculatus. The mantel test between genetic distance of population of Lithocarpus glaber and genetic distance of population of Curculio bimaculatus also showed no significant relationship.The above researches had studied the correlations of diversity among different levels within communities. The future research can further explore the mechanisms underlie those correlations.