Studying the Interaction Between Asphondylia punica and Its Host Plant, Atriplex halimus, and Predicting Their Potential Geographic Distribution in Egypt by Using Maxent Technique

Abstract

Galls and their inducing insects represent one of the most challenges that facing entomologists because of their unique life history and the highly characteristic gall structure. Gall-inducing insects and their distributions in Egypt of little studies which depend on few researchers from countries of Europe during their scientific journeys. Asphondylia punica (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) is associated with one of the most important medicinal plants, the Atriplex halimus (Chenopodiaceae). A. punica induces fusiform swellings galls on the stem of A. halimus with multiple chambers. The interaction between the gall inducer Asphondylia punica and its host plant A. halimus were studied. The results indicated that there was a significant correlation between the number of galls per plant and the plant cover but there was no correlation between the number of galls per plant and altitude. The predicted distributions of Asphondylia punica in Egypt were done by using MaxEnt technique. The results showed that the prediction distribution of Asphondylia punica and its host plant Atriplex halimus is concentrated in Mediterranean coastal regions.

Predicting the potential geographic distribution of Nepeta septemcrenata Benth. and Phlomis aurea Decne in St. Katherine protectorate, South Sinai, Egypt, by using the maxent technique

“…The AUC ranges between 0 and 1, The AUC of 0.5 suggests a random, but an AUC of 1 reveals a perfect model (30). The present work utilized the classification system of AUC reported by (44). The AUC categories are listed as: (0.9 -1.0) indicates outstanding discrimination; (0.8-0.9) indicates excellent discrimination; (0.7-0.8) indicates acceptable discrimination; (0.6-0.7) indicates bad discrimination; (0.5-0.6) indicates no discrimination.…”

Mapping the Predicted Geographic Range of The Gall Former Schizomyia botellus (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) under Influence of Climatic Factors in Arid Habitats.

“…Additionally, these models such as Maxent (a maximum entropy approach) have been used to estimate the impact of environmental and biotic factors on species distribution and abundance, and patterns of species richness even with low presence data (Phillips et al, 2006, Hernandez et al, 2006, Sreekumar et al, 2016. some research was performed using a maximum entropy approach for forecasting the geographic distribution of various species in arid regions of Egypt (El Alqamy et al, 2010, Ragab et al, 2020a, Ragab et al, 2020b Therefore, the main aim of this research was to map the geographic range of S. botellus in Sinai using the Maxent technique for determining the suitable areas for conservation. Furthermore, this research tried to determine the interaction of Schizomyia botellus with Deverra triradiata in some arid regions of Sinai and discover the impact of elevation and plant cover on galls induction.…”