Herbivore Damage to Three Tropical Ferns

Biotropica ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Hendrix ◽  
Robert J. Marquis
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 4183-4196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maartje J. Klapwijk ◽  
György Csóka ◽  
Anikó Hirka ◽  
Christer Björkman

PLoS ONE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. e0209149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Dostálek ◽  
Maan Bahadur Rokaya ◽  
Zuzana Münzbergová

2020 ◽  
Vol 126 (5) ◽  
pp. 957-969
Author(s):  
Enya N Quiroz-Pacheco ◽  
Francisco Mora ◽  
Karina Boege ◽  
César A Domínguez ◽  
Ek del-Val

Abstract Background and Aims The implications of herbivory for plant reproduction have been widely studied; however, the relationship of defoliation and reproductive success is not linear, as there are many interacting factors that may influence reproductive responses to herbivore damage. In this study we aimed to disentangle how the timing of foliar damage impacts both male and female components of fitness, and to assess when it has greater impacts on plant reproductive success. Methods We measured herbivore damage and its effects on floral production, male and female floral attributes as well as fruit yield in three different phenological phases of Casearia nitida (Salicaceae) over the course of two consecutive years. Then we tested two models of multiple causal links among herbivory and reproductive success using piecewise structural equation models. Key Results The effects of leaf damage differed between reproductive seasons and between male and female components of fitness. Moreover, the impact of herbivory extended beyond the year when it was exerted. The previous season’s cumulated foliar damage had the largest impact on reproductive characters, in particular a negative effect on the numbers of inflorescences, flowers and pollen grains, indirectly affecting the numbers of infructescences and fruits, and a positive one on the amount of foliar damage during flowering. Conclusions For perennial and proleptic species, the dynamics of resource acquisition and allocation patterns for reproduction promote and extend the effects of herbivore damage to longer periods than a single reproductive event and growing season, through the interactions among different components of female and male fitness.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7798
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Azevedo Schmidt ◽  
Regan E. Dunn ◽  
Jason Mercer ◽  
Marieke Dechesne ◽  
Ellen D. Currano

Ecosystem function and stability are highly affected by internal and external stressors. Utilizing paleobotanical data gives insight into the evolutionary processes an ecosystem undergoes across long periods of time, allowing for a more complete understanding of how plant and insect herbivore communities are affected by ecosystem imbalance. To study how plant and insect herbivore communities change during times of disturbance, we quantified community turnover across the Paleocene­–Eocene boundary in the Hanna Basin, southeastern Wyoming. This particular location is unlike other nearby Laramide basins because it has an abundance of late Paleocene and Eocene coal and carbonaceous shales and paucity of well-developed paleosols, suggesting perpetually high water availability. We sampled approximately 800 semi-intact dicot leaves from five stratigraphic levels, one of which occurs late in the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). Field collections were supplemented with specimens at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Fossil leaves were classified into morphospecies and herbivore damage was documented for each leaf. We tested for changes in plant and insect herbivore damage diversity using rarefaction and community composition using non-metric multidimensional scaling ordinations. We also documented changes in depositional environment at each stratigraphic level to better contextualize the environment of the basin. Plant diversity was highest during the mid-late Paleocene and decreased into the Eocene, whereas damage diversity was highest at the sites with low plant diversity. Plant communities significantly changed during the late PETM and do not return to pre-PETM composition. Insect herbivore communities also changed during the PETM, but, unlike plant communities, rebound to their pre-PETM structure. These results suggest that insect herbivore communities responded more strongly to plant community composition than to the diversity of species present.


Author(s):  
Qijia Li ◽  
Weiyudong Deng ◽  
Torsten Wappler ◽  
Torsten Utescher ◽  
Natalia Maslova ◽  
...  

Insects ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 865
Author(s):  
Zuzana Münzbergová ◽  
Jiří Skuhrovec

Data on plant herbivore damage as well as on herbivore performance have been previously used to identify key plant traits driving plant–herbivore interactions. The extent to which the two approaches lead to similar conclusions remains to be explored. We determined the effect of a free-living leaf-chewing generalist caterpillar, Spodoptera littoralis (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), on leaf damage of 24 closely related plant species from the Carduoideae subfamily and the effect of these plant species on caterpillar growth. We used a wide range of physical defense leaf traits and leaf nutrient contents as the plant traits. Herbivore performance and leaf damage were affected by similar plant traits. Traits related to higher caterpillar mortality (higher leaf dissection, number, length and toughness of spines and lower trichome density) also led to higher leaf damage. This fits with the fact that each caterpillar was feeding on a single plant and, thus, had to consume more biomass of the less suitable plants to obtain the same amount of nutrients. The key plant traits driving plant–herbivore interactions identified based on data on herbivore performance largely corresponded to the traits identified as important based on data on leaf damage. This suggests that both types of data may be used to identify the key plant traits determining plant–herbivore interactions. It is, however, important to carefully distinguish whether the data on leaf damage were obtained in the field or in a controlled feeding experiment, as the patterns expected in the two environments may go in opposite directions.


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