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BIBTEX RIS

Specificity of leaf damage in the Permian “Glossopteris Flora”: A quantitative approach

2012; Elsevier BV; Volume: 174; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.revpalbo.2012.01.002

1879-0615

Esther Regina de Souza Pinheiro, Roberto Iannuzzi, Graciela Pereira Tybusch,

Plant and animal studies

The main goal of this contribution was to analyze the distribution of types of foliar damage in the different genera of leaves forming the "Glossopteris Flora". We studied material collected in five localities in the southern Paraná Basin, dated as Early Permian (Sakmarian–Artinskian), was studied. Fourteen types of damage caused by insects were identified in leaves of Glossopteris sp., Gangamopteris sp., and Cordaites sp. A MANOVA with permutation tests was used to evaluate the effects of the factors "genera" and "outcrop" in relation to the patterns of herbivory found in leaf impressions/compressions. A total of 850 samples were examined. Only 68 showed evidence of insect–plant interactions and the analyses of variance indicated that the foliar genera differed significantly in herbivory patterns (P = 0.005). Glossopteris sp. and Cordaites sp. differed from each other (P = 0.0013), and Gangamopteris sp. differed from Cordaites sp. (P = 0.036). However, Glossopteris sp. did not differ from Gangamopteris sp. The sites also differed significantly with respect to damage types (P = 0.001). Thus, one can conclude that apparently there was an association between types of foliar damage and genera of the "Glossopteris Flora"; indicating that probably particular groups of Paleozoic insects selected the plants with which they interacted. The influence of the depositional environment (facies and depositional systems) on the preservation of plant–insect interactions, which is a topic deserving further investigation, can be explained either by latitudinal gradient or taphonomic processes, or because each depositional environment may represent a distinct flora and fauna, which lead to different patterns of plant–insect interactions.