Climate and ant diversity explain the global distribution of ant‐plant mutualisms

Luo, Yangqing; Taylor, Amanda; Weigelt, Patrick; Guénard, Benoit; Economo, Evan P.; Nowak, Arkadiusz; Inderjit,; Kreft, Holger

doi:10.1111/ecog.06841

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Finally, GIFT has also been used to advance our understanding of the distribution of alien plant species compared to native species (e.g. Bach et al, 2022;Omer et al, 2022;van Kleunen et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2021) as well as species interactions (Delavaux et al, 2019;Luo et al, 2023).…”

Section: A Short History Of Giftmentioning

confidence: 99%

GIFT—An R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

Denelle,

Weigelt,

Kreft

2023

Methods Ecol Evol

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Advancing knowledge of biodiversity requires global open‐access databases. Having large‐scale information on plant distributions, functional traits and evolutionary history will enable the scientific community to improve its understanding of the patterns and drivers of plant diversity on a global scale. The Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT) is a global database of regional plant checklists that has proven successful in documenting biogeographical patterns of plants. Since the release of the first version of GIFT, the database kept on expanding. We introduce GIFT version 3.0, which contains 5169 plant checklists referring to 3400 regions worldwide. These checklists include a total of 371,148 land plant species, mostly vascular plants, of which 354,848 have accepted species names, and species‐level data for 109 functional traits. This new version of GIFT relies on new resources for taxonomic name standardization, is matched to a new plant phylogeny, comes with a new trait aggregation workflow and includes additional environmental variables. We also present the GIFT R‐package, which contains all necessary functions to retrieve distributional, functional, phylogenetic, and environmental data from the GIFT database. The package comes with a dedicated website, https://biogeomacro.github.io/GIFT/, which includes three vignettes to guide users in retrieving data from GIFT. The recent development of GIFT and its associated R‐package provide ecologists with access to one of the largest plant databases. This will foster research into regional to global patterns of plant diversity and their underlying mechanisms. The ability to retrieve and cite data from any previous and current instance of the GIFT database will ensure the reproducibility of studies that utilise it.

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Section: A Short History Of Giftmentioning

confidence: 99%

GIFT—An R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

Denelle,

Weigelt,

Kreft

2023

Methods Ecol Evol

Self Cite

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Section: A Short History Of Giftmentioning

confidence: 99%

GIFT – an R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

Denelle

Weigelt

Kreft

2023

Preprint

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1. Advancing knowledge of biodiversity requires open-access global databases and workflows. This appears particularly crucial for plants, as ongoing changes pose major threats to this central group of organisms. Having large-scale information on plant distributions, functional traits and evolutionary history will enable the scientific community to improve its understanding of the patterns and drivers of plant diversity on a global scale. 2. The Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT) is a global database of regional plant checklists that has proven successful in documenting biogeographical and geographical patterns of plants. Since the release of the first version of GIFT, the database kept on expanding. We introduce GIFT version 3.0, which contains 5,169 checklists referring to 3,400 regions. These checklists include a total of 371,148 land plant species, mostly vascular plants, of which 354,848 are accepted species names, and 109 functional traits. This new version uses new resources for taxonomic name standardization, is matched to a new plant phylogeny, comes with a new trait aggregation workflow, and includes additional environmental variables. 3. We also present the GIFT R-package, which contains all necessary functions to retrieve distributional, functional, phylogenetic, and environmental data from the GIFT database. The package comes with a dedicated website, https://biogeomacro.github.io/GIFT/, which includes three rich vignettes to guide users in retrieving data from GIFT. 4. The recent development of GIFT and its associated R-package provide ecologists with access to one of the largest plant databases. This will foster research into regional to global patterns of plant diversity and their underlying mechanisms. Proper versioning of the database and the ability to retrieve and cite data from any previous and current instance of the GIFT database will ensure the reproducibility of studies that utilize it.

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Testing the joint effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and ants on insect herbivory on potato plants

Moreira,

Martín-Cacheda,

Quiroga

et al. 2024

Planta

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Main conclusion Ants, but not mycorrhizae, significantly affected insect leaf-chewing herbivory on potato plants. However, there was no evidence of mutualistic interactive effects on herbivory. Abstract Plants associate with both aboveground and belowground mutualists, two prominent examples being ants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), respectively. While both of these mutualisms have been extensively studied, joint manipulations testing their independent and interactive (non-additive) effects on plants are rare. To address this gap, we conducted a joint test of ant and AMF effects on herbivory by leaf-chewing insects attacking potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants, and further measured plant traits likely mediating mutualist effects on herbivory. In a field experiment, we factorially manipulated the presence of AMF (two levels: control and mycorrhization) and ants (two levels: exclusion and presence) and quantified the concentration of leaf phenolic compounds acting as direct defenses, as well as plant volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions potentially mediating direct (e.g., herbivore repellents) or indirect (e.g., ant attractants) defense. Moreover, we measured ant abundance and performed a dual-choice greenhouse experiment testing for effects of VOC blends (mimicking those emitted by control vs. AMF-inoculated plants) on ant attraction as a mechanism for indirect defense. Ant presence significantly reduced herbivory whereas mycorrhization had no detectable influence on herbivory and mutualist effects operated independently. Plant trait measurements indicated that mycorrhization had no effect on leaf phenolics but significantly increased VOC emissions. However, mycorrhization did not affect ant abundance and there was no evidence of AMF effects on herbivory operating via ant-mediated defense. Consistently, the dual-choice assay showed no effect of AMF-induced volatile blends on ant attraction. Together, these results suggest that herbivory on potato plants responds mainly to top-down (ant-mediated) rather than bottom-up (AMF-mediated) control, an asymmetry in effects which could have precluded mutualist non-additive effects on herbivory. Further research on this, as well as other plant systems, is needed to examine the ecological contexts under which mutualist interactive effects are more or less likely to emerge and their impacts on plant fitness and associated communities.

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Climate and ant diversity explain the global distribution of ant‐plant mutualisms

Cited by 6 publications

References 71 publications

GIFT—An R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

GIFT—An R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

GIFT – an R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

Testing the joint effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and ants on insect herbivory on potato plants

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