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Trade-off among different anti-herbivore defence strategies along an altitudinal gradient.

ABSTRACT: The type and intensity of plant-herbivore interactions are likely to be altered under climate change as a consequence of differential dispersal rates of plants and their herbivores. Here, we studied variation in herbivore damage on Salvia nubicola in the field and compared its growth and defence strategies against herbivores in controlled conditions using seeds from populations along a broad altitudinal gradient. Our work is one of the first studies to simultaneously measure complex intraspecific variation in plant growth, direct and indirect defences as well as plant tolerance (ability to regrow) as a consequence of herbivore attack simulated by clipping. In the field, we found that plants experienced higher herbivore pressure in lower altitudes. In the greenhouse, plants grown from seeds collected in lower-altitude populations grew better and produced a higher content of phenolic compounds (direct defence) and volatile organic compounds (indirect defence) in response to simulated herbivory. However, there were no differences in tolerance and effect of S. nubicola extracts on the model generalist herbivore Spodoptera littoralis (direct defence) along the altitudinal gradient. Although we found that S. nubicola developed a range of defence strategies, the strategies do not seem to be used simultaneously in all populations even though most of them are correlated with altitudinal gradient. Our finding is in agreement with the current knowledge that co-expression of multiple defences might be costly for a plant, since investment in defensive traits is assumed to reduce the resource availability for growth and reproduction. Our study thus shows the importance of simultaneous study of different defence strategies since understanding these trade-offs could be necessary for detecting the mechanisms by which plants are able to cope with future climate change.

SUBMITTER: Dostalek T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4940502 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Trade-off among different anti-herbivore defence strategies along an altitudinal gradient.

Dostálek Tomáš T Rokaya Maan Bahadur MB Maršík Petr P Rezek Jan J Skuhrovec Jiří J Pavela Roman R Münzbergová Zuzana Z

AoB PLANTS 20160711

The type and intensity of plant-herbivore interactions are likely to be altered under climate change as a consequence of differential dispersal rates of plants and their herbivores. Here, we studied variation in herbivore damage on Salvia nubicola in the field and compared its growth and defence strategies against herbivores in controlled conditions using seeds from populations along a broad altitudinal gradient. Our work is one of the first studies to simultaneously measure complex intraspecifi ...[more]

PMID: 27169609

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Project description:Understanding the response of biomass allocation in twigs (the terminal branches of current-year shoots) to environmental change is crucial for elucidating forest ecosystem carbon storage, carbon cycling, and plant life history strategies under a changing climate. On the basis of interspecies investigations of broad-leaved plants, previous studies have demonstrated that plants respond to environmental factors by allocating biomass in an allometric manner between support tissues (i.e., stems) and the leaf biomass of twigs, where the scaling exponent (i.e., slope of a log-log linear relationship, ?) is constant, and the scaling constant (i.e., intercept of a log-log linear relationship, log ?) varies with respect to environmental factors. However, little is known about whether the isometric scaling exponents of such biomass allocations remain invariant for single species, particularly conifers, at different altitudes and in different growing periods. In this study, we investigated how twig biomass allocation varies with elevation and period among Pinus hwangshanensis Hsia trees growing in the mountains of Southeast China. Specifically, we explored how twig stem mass, needle mass, and needle area varied throughout the growing period (early, mid-, late) and at three elevations in the Wuyi Mountains. Standardized major axis analysis was used to compare the scaling exponents and scaling constants between the biomass allocations of within-twig components. Scaling relationships between these traits differed with growing period and altitude gradient. During the different growing periods, there was an isometric scaling relationship, with a common slope of 1.0 (i.e., ? ? 1.0), between needle mass and twig mass (the sum of the total needle mass and the stem mass), whereas there were allometric scaling relationships between the stem mass and twig mass and between the needle mass and stem mass of P. hwangshanensis. The scaling constants (log ?) for needle mass vs. twig mass and for needle mass vs. stem mass increased progressively across the growing stages, whereas the scaling constants of stem mass vs. twig mass showed the opposite pattern. The scaling exponents (?) of needle area with respect to needle biomass increased significantly with growing period, changing from an allometric relationship (i.e., ? < 1.0) during the early growing period to a nearly isometric relationship (i.e., ? ? 1.0) during the late growing period. This change possibly reflects the functional adaptation of twigs in different growing periods to meet their specific reproductive or survival needs. At different points along the altitudinal gradient, the relationships among needle mass, twig mass, and stem mass were all isometric (i.e., ? ? 1.0). Moreover, significant differences were found in scaling constants (log ?) along the altitudinal gradient, such that species had a smaller stem biomass but a relatively larger needle mass at low altitude. In addition, the scaling exponents remained numerically invariant among all three altitudes, with a common slope of 0.8, suggesting that needle area failed to keep pace with the increasing needle mass at different altitudes. Our results indicated that the twig biomass allocation pattern was significantly influenced by altitude and growing period, which reflects the functional adaptation of twigs to meet their specific survival needs under different climatic conditions.

Dataset Information

Trade-off among different anti-herbivore defence strategies along an altitudinal gradient.

Publications

Trade-off among different anti-herbivore defence strategies along an altitudinal gradient.

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