Reginald Cocroft Lab

Home >Frédéric Legendre

205 Tucker Hall
Division of Biological Sciences
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
phone: (573) 882-4189
fax: (573) 882-0123
email: legendref@missouri.edu
Click here to see my CV.
PhD Dissertation (pdf in French)

Research Interests

My research deals with the evolution of behavior in a phylogenetic context. I reconstruct phylogenies before using them as a historical reference to test evolutionary hypotheses.
Following this phylogenetic approach, I investigate the evolution of social behavior in termites, cockroaches (Insecta: Dictyoptera) and Membracidae (Insecta: Hemiptera).
For the first step of my research, reconstructing phylogenies, I use traditional characters (morphology and molecules), but also more original ones (development and behavior). The use of original characters led me to propose some methodological innovations and to think about the behavioral homology concept.
Within the Zetoborinae (Blattaria: Blaberidae), I focus on the evolution of solitary and subsocial behaviors and showed that previous hypotheses on social evolution should be reviewed, at least in this case study. For instance, the solitary species Thanatophyllum akinetum is unexpectedly behaviorally similar to its close gregarious relatives.

Within termites, I study the evolution of worker castes. My investigations strongly support three independent origins of the true worker caste. In other words, these results suggest that the worker caste is not homologous throughout all termites species but evolved in a convergent and/or parallel way(s).

Recolting gregarious nymphs of Paradicta rotunda in a hollow trunk (Montagne de Kaw, French Guyana).

Male of the solitary species Thanatophyllum akinetum.

Within the Membracidae, correlation between sociality and different features such as nymphal coloration or ant mutualism will be tested in a comparative study.

The phylogenetic approach is powerful but has some limitations because different processes can result in the same pattern. In this regard, behavioral studies can bring completing information. Thus, I currently perform some experimental studies dealing with communication, an essential feature in sociality. Gregarious species of Membracidae are used to characterize nymphal communication.

List of publications

Legendre, F., Robillard, T., Desutter-Grandcolas, L. and Grandcolas, P. Phylogenetic analysis of non-stereotyped behavioural sequences with a successive event-pairing method (Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, accepted).
Legendre, F. Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History (by Bell, W. J., Roth, L. M. et Nalepa, C. A.) Book Review. The Quarterly Review of Biology (in press).
Legendre, F., Whiting, M. F., Bordereau, C., Cancello, E. M., Evans, T. and Grandcolas, P. The phylogeny of termites (Dictyoptera: Isoptera) based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes: implications for the evolution of the worker and pseudergate castes, and foraging behaviors (Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, accepted).
Legendre, F., Pellens, R. and Grandcolas, P. A comparison of behavioral interactions in solitary and presocial Zetoborinae cockroaches (Blattaria, Blaberidae) (Journal of Insect Behavior, accepted).
Desutter-Grandcolas, L., Legendre, F., Grandcolas, P., Robillard, T. and Murienne, J. (2007). Distinguishing between convergence and parallelism is central to comparative biology: a reply to Williams and Eebach. Cladistics 23 : 90-94.
Pellens, R., D’Haese, C. A., Bellés, X., Piulachs, M-D., Legendre, F., Wheeler, W. and Grandcolas, P. (2007). The evolutionary transition from subsocial to eusocial behaviour in Dictyoptera: phylogenetic evidence for modification of the “shift-in-dependent-care” hypothesis with a new subsocial cockroach. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 43 : 616-626.
Pellens, R., Legendre, F. and Grandcolas, P. (2007). Phylogenetic analysis of social behavior evolution in [Zetoborinae + Blaberinae + Gyninae + Diplopterinae] cockroaches: an update with the study of endemic radiations from the Atlantic forest. Studies in Neotropical Fauna 42 : 25-31.
Robillard, T., Legendre, F., Desutter-Grandcolas, L. and Grandcolas, P. (2006). Phylogenetic analysis and alignment of behavioral sequences by direct optimization. Cladistics 22 : 602-633.
Desutter-Grandcolas, L., Legendre, F., Grandcolas, P., Robillard, T. and Murienne, J. (2005). Convergence and parallelism: is a new life ahead of old concepts? Cladistics 21 : 51-61.
Murienne, J., Grandcolas, P., Piulachs, M. D., Bellés, X., D’Haese, C., Legendre, F., Pellens, R. and Guilbert, E. (2005). Evolution on a shaky piece of Gondwana: is local endemism recent in New Caledonia? Cladistics 21 : 2-7.
Grandcolas, P., Legendre, F., Park, Y. C., Bellés, X., Murienne, J. and Pellens, R. (2005). The genus Cryptocercus in East Asia: distribution and new species (Insecta, Dictyoptera, Blattaria, Polyphagidae). Zoosystema 27 : 725-732.
Grandcolas, P., Guilbert, E., Robillard, T., D’Haese, C. A., Murienne, J. and Legendre, F. (2004). Mapping characters on a tree with or without the outgroups. Cladistics 20 : 579-582.