The Iberian Peninsula holds one of the richest myrmecofauna Mediterranean basin, but some regions such as Portugal remain comparatively undersampled. Although new unrecorded species have been regularly found and published during last two decades, sum is still far from approaching more than 300 known to occur in Peninsula. In this context, arboreal ant Temnothorax convexus (Forel, 1894) reported...

Trace fossils of insect feeding have contributed substantially to our understanding of the evolution of insect-plant interactions. The most complex phenotypes of herbivory are galls, whose diagnostic morphologies often allow the identification of the gall inducer. Although fossil insect-induced galls over 300Myr old are known, most are two-dimensional impressions lacking adequate morphological ...

Galls are highly specialized plant tissues whose development is induced by another organism. The most complex and diverse galls are those induced on oak trees by gallwasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae: Cynipini), each species inducing a characteristic gall structure. Debate continues over the possible adaptive signi¢cance of gall structural traits; some protect the gall inducer from attack by natura...

Revealing the interactions between alien species and native communities is central to understanding the ecological consequences of range expansion. Much has been learned through study of the communities developing around invading herbivorous insects. Much less, however, is known about the significance of such aliens for native vertebrate predators for which invaders may represent a novel food s...

Abstract Ozognathus cornutus (LeConte, 1859) (Coleoptera: Ptinidae: Ernobiinae), species native to North America, is a saproxylophagous and known feed on decaying tissues within conspicuous galls vegetal organic material such as dried fruits or small wood shavings insect excrements in galleries made by other woodboring species. A few years after the first record 2011, its naturalization Italy h...

Many studies have addressed the latitudinal gradients in intraspecific genetic diversity of European taxa generated during postglacial range expansion from southern refugia. Although Asia Minor is known to be a centre of diversity for many taxa, relatively few studies have considered its potential role as a Pleistocene refugium or a potential source for more ancient westward range expansion int...

Mitochondrial DNA barcodes provide a simple taxonomic tool for systematic and ecological research, with particular benefit for poorly studied or species-rich taxa. Barcoding assumes genetic diversity follows species boundaries; however, many processes disrupt species-level monophyly of barcodes leading to incorrect classifications. Spatial population structure, particularly when shared across c...