Fonseca, Carlos Roberto Sorensen Dutra daPaiva, Tales Martins de Alencar2020-07-082020-07-082020-02-19PAIVA, Tales Martins de Alencar. Insetos herbívoros e taxa de fecundação cruzada em espermatófitas. 2020. 84f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Ecologia) - Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2020.https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/29511Understanding the evolution of plant mating systems, which can be described by selfing and outcrossing rates, is a great challenge in evolutionary biology. The Red Queen hypothesis suggests that host-parasite biotic interaction is the major factor driving the evolution and persistence of sexual reproduction in nature. Species under higher pressure of natural enemies are expected to show higher investment in sex. There are support for Red Queen for several groups of animals, however in plant kingdom this hypothesis remains underexploited, especially using comparative approaches. Here, we test if richness of insect herbivores associated to seed plants modulate their outcrossing rates. Phylogenetic regressions, under two alternative evolutionary models (Brownian Motion and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck) were used to test this hypothesis for all available species and for native and exotic species, when controlling for key vegetative covariables (life span, growth form, specific leaf area and maximum height). For all species, we showed that plant species associated to more insect herbivores had higher outcrossing rates. We found the same pattern for native species, but not for exotic species. We also found that tall and longer-lived plants tend to be higher outcrossing rates than small and short-lived. These results are in accordance with the expected by the Red Queen hypothesis, supporting the still scarce empirical framework of macroevolutionary studies about the role of natural enemies on evolution of mating system in seed plants.Acesso AbertoModelos evolutivosHerbivoriaSistemas sexuaisInimigos naturaisHipótese da Rainha VermelhamasterThesisCNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA