Plant phylogeny drives arboreal caterpillar assemblages across the Holarctic

Seifert, Carlo L.; Volf, Martin; Jorge, Leonardo Ré; Abe, Tomokazu; Carscallen, Grace; Drozd, Pavel; Kumar, Rajesh; Lamarre, Greg P. A.; Libra, Martin; Losada, María Eugenia; Miller, Scott E.; Murakami, Masashi; Nichols, Geoffrey; Pyszko, Petr; Šigut, Martin; Wagner, David L.; Novotný, Vojtěch

doi:10.1002/ece3.7005

Cited by 12 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(180 reference statements)

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“…Our second mechanism predicted proportions of shelterbuilders, which are more specialised than exposed feeders (Seifert et al 2020b), to decline further into the growing season. However, proportional abundances of shelter-builders were only found to decrease in midseason.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Seasonality affects specialisation of a temperate forest herbivore community

Seifert

Jorge

Volf

et al. 2021

Oikos

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Understanding spatiotemporal trends on insect-plant interaction networks is essential to unveil the ecological and evolutionary processes driving herbivore specialisation. However, community studies accounting for temporal dynamics in host-plant specialisation of herbivorous insects are surprisingly scarce. Here, we investigated how seasonality affects specialisation of a temperate forest herbivore community. A substantial body of literature suggests that young plant foliage tends to be more protected by defence mechanisms effective against generalist insect herbivores than mature leaves. We thus hypothesised that herbivore specialisation would be highest in the early season, when young leaves are available, and that the degree of dietary specialisation would decline with leaf maturation. To test this hypothesis, we sampled more than 4700 folivorous caterpillars associated with 16 tree species within a 0.2 ha deciduous forest stand in eastern North America. We further examined the dietary specialisation of exposed feeders versus shelter builders (e.g. leaf rollers, leaf tiers, webbers). Contrary to our prediction, we observed a significantly less specialised herbivore fauna in the early season than in the two subsequent summer seasons. We further found that the seasonal increase in specialisation was driven by a remarkable turnover in species composition rather than by shifts in guild structure or intraspecific changes in diet breadth of the herbivores. These findings run counter to the widespread belief that young leaves are less susceptible to generalist insect herbivores. Our study underscores the need to account for temporal dynamics when contrasting herbivore specialisation among sites with pronounced seasonality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Seasonality affects specialisation of a temperate forest herbivore community

Seifert

Jorge

Volf

et al. 2021

Oikos

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“…Finally, we found increasing community dissimilarity with increasing phylogenetic distance between tree genera (Figure 3). Pairwise dissimilarities of communities of phytophagous insects increase with increasing phylogenetic distance between their host trees (Brändle & Brandl, 2006; Novotny et al, 2010; Seifert et al, 2020; Vialatte et al, 2010). Studies on saproxylic beetles have reported greater α‐diversity associated with evolutionarily non‐isolated trees, such as oaks, hornbeams ( Carpinus ) or elms ( Ulmus ) (Gossner et al, 2013, 2016; Müller, Wende, et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among deciduous trees, oaks host the richest assemblages of insects in Europe (Brändle & Brandl, 2001; Southwood, 1961). Closely related hosts typically share physiological and chemical characteristics (Agrawal, 2007; Seifert et al, 2020; Whitfeld et al, 2012), which may also determine the composition of wood‐inhabiting fungi and bacteria communities (Moll et al, 2018). Therefore, lower variation of beetle assemblages between closely related trees might be the result of a shared species pool.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Changes in β‐diversity of saproxylic beetles along environmental gradients in temperate forests depend on species relative abundances

Sebek

Čížek

Hauck

et al. 2022

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim: Understanding the processes that structure biological communities along environmental gradients remains one of the main aims of ecological research. A leading question is how differences in species composition between sites, that is, β-diversity, change in habitats ordered along environmental gradients and how such changes vary with species relative abundances. The existing literature remains descriptive, mostly comparing communities from different parts of a gradient, but not tracking sequential changes of β-diversity along the entire gradient.Location: Temperate deciduous forests in Central Europe.Taxa: Saproxylic beetles. Methods:We applied a generalized concept of Hill numbers to data on the distribution of saproxylic beetles to test (i) whether community dissimilarities correlate with dissimilarities in major environmental variables (canopy openness, tree diameter and tree genus) and (ii) which mechanisms explain sequential changes of β-diversity along these environmental gradients. Furthermore, we illustrate changes in the mean (αdiversity) and total (γ-diversity) number of species along the gradients.Results: Dissimilarities in saproxylic beetle communities were positively correlated with dissimilarities in all studied environmental variables. Changes in β-diversity along the gradients differed for different weighting of rare, common and dominant species, with rare and dominant species always showing opposite trends. β-diversity increased simultaneously with increasing γ-diversity when weight was given to dominant species. On the other hand, β-diversity decreased when weight was given to rare species. Main conclusions:The different response of rare and dominant species indicates a similar importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in determining β-diversity.Although the changes in β-diversity detected along the environmental gradients were relatively slight, major community dissimilarities were found when comparing communities in different locations of the environmental gradients.

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“…For insects, studies have suggested high correlations between phylogenetic structure and species cooccurrences across different areas (e.g. Ceccarelli et al 2020, Seifert et al 2020, Staab et al 2020). However, it is still unclear how phylogenetic distance and functional traits affect co-occurrence within two trophic levels (Gotelli & McCabe 2002, Kraft et al 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phylogenetic relatedness, functional traits, and spatial scale determine herbivore co‐occurrence in a subtropical forest

Wang

Yan

Luo

et al. 2021

Ecological Monographs

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The mechanisms driving species co-occurrence are varied and include biotic interactions, abiotic factors, and scale-dependent processes. Based on a comprehensive dataset of lepidopteran herbivores recorded from a large-scale forest biodiversity experiment, we tested the contribution to herbivore species co-occurrence of herbivore phylogenetic relatedness, plant diversity and functional traits, and spatial scale. We found that Lepidoptera cooccurrence was negatively associated with their phylogenetic relatedness, tree diversity, and defensive traits, but positively associated with nutritional functional traits. Furthermore, species co-occurrence was higher at larger spatial scales (tree species or plot) than at smaller scale (individual trees). Our results provide evidence supporting both environmental filtering and competition exclusion hypotheses, and highlight the significance of functionality in shaping species coexistence of herbivores in plant-arthropod systems.

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Plant phylogeny drives arboreal caterpillar assemblages across the Holarctic

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 12 publications

References 90 publications

Seasonality affects specialisation of a temperate forest herbivore community

Seasonality affects specialisation of a temperate forest herbivore community

Changes in β‐diversity of saproxylic beetles along environmental gradients in temperate forests depend on species relative abundances

Phylogenetic relatedness, functional traits, and spatial scale determine herbivore co‐occurrence in a subtropical forest

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