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Phylogenetic and trait similarity to a native species predict herbivory on non-native oaks.

ABSTRACT: Introduced plants tend to experience less herbivory than natives, although herbivore loads vary widely. Herbivores may switch hosts onto an introduced plant for at least two reasons. They may recognize the novel plant as a potential host based on similarity of the plant's traits to the traits of one of its native hosts, a similarity that may or may not exhibit phylogenetic signal. Alternatively, herbivores may feed optimally, assessing which introduced plants provide the best nutrition irrespective of similarity to native species. Here, we created a phylogeny of 57 oak (Quercus) taxa, which were grown outside of their ranges in a common botanical garden that contained one abundant native oak (Quercus lobata). We used the phylogeny to estimate the phylogenetic conservatism of herbivory by two feeding guilds of insects (leaf chewers and leaf miners) and 11 plant traits expected to affect herbivore performance. We found high phylogenetic signal in chewing damage but not mining damage and all traits except for leaf maturation time. Introduced oaks that are more closely related to the native oak received more chewing and mining damage than distantly related oaks, and introduced oaks that had greater overall similarity in leaf traits also received higher chewing damage but not mining damage. These results demonstrate that interactions between introduced plants and their herbivores are driven independently by traits that track plant phylogeny and leaf traits that likely affect herbivore performance.

SUBMITTER: Pearse IS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2775336 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Phylogenetic and trait similarity to a native species predict herbivory on non-native oaks.

Pearse Ian S IS Hipp Andrew L AL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20091019 43

Introduced plants tend to experience less herbivory than natives, although herbivore loads vary widely. Herbivores may switch hosts onto an introduced plant for at least two reasons. They may recognize the novel plant as a potential host based on similarity of the plant's traits to the traits of one of its native hosts, a similarity that may or may not exhibit phylogenetic signal. Alternatively, herbivores may feed optimally, assessing which introduced plants provide the best nutrition irrespect ...[more]

PMID: 19841257

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Project description:Long-standing ecological theory proposes that diverse communities of plants should experience a decrease in herbivory. Yet previous empirical examinations of this hypothesis have revealed that plant species richness increases herbivory in just as many systems as it decreases it. In this study, I ask whether more insight into the role of plant diversity in promoting or suppressing herbivory can be gained by incorporating information about the evolutionary history of species in a community. In an old field system in southern Ontario, I surveyed communities of plants and measured levels of leaf damage on 27 species in 38 plots. I calculated a measure of phylogenetic diversity (PSE) that encapsulates information about the amount of evolutionary history represented in each of the plots and looked for a relationship between levels of herbivory and both species richness and phylogenetic diversity using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) that could account for variation in herbivory levels between species. I found that species richness was positively associated with herbivore damage at the plot-level, in keeping with the results from several other recent studies on this question. On the other hand, phylogenetic diversity was associated with decreased herbivory. Importantly, there was also an interaction between species richness and phylogenetic diversity, such that plots with the highest levels of herbivory were plots which had many species but only if those species tended to be closely related to one another. I propose that these results are the consequence of interactions with herbivores whose diets are phylogenetically specialized (for which I introduce the term cladophage), and how phylogenetic diversity may alter their realized host ranges. These results suggest that incorporating a phylogenetic perspective can add valuable additional insight into the role of plant diversity in explaining or predicting levels of herbivory at a whole-community scale.

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Dataset Information

Phylogenetic and trait similarity to a native species predict herbivory on non-native oaks.

Publications

Phylogenetic and trait similarity to a native species predict herbivory on non-native oaks.

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