Weak latitudinal gradients in insect herbivory for dominant rangeland grasses of North America

Kent, Dylan R.; Lynn, Joshua S.; Pennings, Steven C.; Souza, Lara; Smith, Melinda D.; Rudgers, Jennifer A.

doi:10.1002/ece3.6374

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…[100]). Coloration of grass-feeding species may be more globally consistent, however, as recent studies find weaker latitudinal clines in traits of grasses [101]. Despite these considerations (see the electronic supplementary material for further discussion), we find overarching associations between pattern, colour and diet ecology that are robust across many families of both caterpillars and host plants, and consistent with strategies to avoid attack in many other taxa.…”

Section: (C) Both Broad and Narrower Diets May Favour Camouflage Colo...supporting

confidence: 73%

Macroevolution of protective coloration across caterpillars reflects relationships with host plants

et al. 2023

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A critical function of animal coloration is avoiding attack, either by warning predators or reducing detectability. Evolution of these divergent strategies may depend on prey palatability and apparency to predators: conspicuous coloration may be favoured if species are distasteful, or habitats make hiding difficult; by contrast, camouflage may be effective if prey lack defences or environments are visually complex. For insect herbivores, host plants provide both chemical defence and the background against which they are detected or obscured; thus, plant traits may be key to coloration in these foundational terrestrial organisms. We use 1808 species of larval Lepidoptera to explore macroevolution of protective coloration strategy. We find that colour and pattern evolve jointly in caterpillars, similar to an array of species across the animal kingdom, while individual elements of coloration evolve closely with diet ecology. Consistent with key tenets of plant defence and plant–herbivore coevolutionary theory, conspicuous colours are associated with herbaceous host plants—thought to be defended by toxins—while camouflage colours and patterns are associated with woody plants and grasses. Contrary to theory, dietary specialization is not associated with conspicuous coloration. Our results add valuable insights into the evolutionary forces shaping colour and pattern in nature.

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Section: (C) Both Broad and Narrower Diets May Favour Camouflage Colo...supporting

confidence: 73%

Macroevolution of protective coloration across caterpillars reflects relationships with host plants

et al. 2023

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“…Increases in within season rainfall may release water limitations of insect communities (Prather et al, 2020), driving higher rates of consumption. This result also aligns with past work that demonstrated simultaneous increases in both temperature and precipitation increased herbivory on Argentina anserina (Pepi & Karban, 2021) and that standing herbivory on plants is often greater in warm regions with high precipitation over large spatial scales (Kent et al, 2020;Moreira et al, 2015).…”

Section: Disease Damage Amount Increases With Precipitation Dependent...supporting

confidence: 91%

Herbivory damage but not plant disease under experimental warming is dependent on weather for three subalpine grass species

et al. 2022

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1. Both theory and prior studies predict that climate warming should increase attack rates by herbivores and pathogens on plants. However, past work has often assumed that variation in abiotic conditions other than temperature (e.g. precipitation) do not alter warming responses of plant damage by natural enemies.Studies over short time periods span low variation in weather, and studies over long time-scales often neglect to account for fine-scale weather conditions.2. Here, we used a 20+ year warming experiment to investigate if warming affects on herbivory and pathogen disease are dependent on variation in ambient weather observed over 3 years. We studied three common grass species in a subalpine meadow in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, USA. We visually estimated herbivory and disease every 2 weeks during the growing season and evaluated weather conditions during the previous 2-or 4-week time interval(2-week average air temperature, 2-and 4-week cumulative precipitation) as predictors of the probability and amount of damage.3. Herbivore attack was 13% more likely and damage amount was 29% greater in warmed plots than controls across the focal species but warming treatment had little affect on plant disease. Herbivory presence and damage increased the most with experimental warming when preceded by wetter, rather than drier, fine-scale weather, but preceding ambient temperature did not strongly interact with elevated warming to influence herbivory. 4. Disease presence and amount increased, on average, with warmer weather and more precipitation regardless of warming.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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“…We then oven‐dried roots at 65℃ for 48 h to calculate SRL: root length divided by mass (cm/g). In the field, we visually estimated folivory for two leaves per plant (Kent et al, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biogeography of root‐associated fungi in foundation grasses of North American plains

Rudgers

Fox

Porras-Alfaro

et al. 2021

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim: Roots and rhizospheres host diverse microbial communities that can influence the fitness, phenotypes, and environmental tolerances of plants. Documenting the biogeography of these microbiomes can detect the potential for a changing environment to disrupt host-microbe interactions, particularly in cases where microbes buffer hosts against abiotic stressors. We evaluated whether root-associated fungi had poleward declines in diversity, tested whether fungal communities in roots shifted near host plant range edges, and determined the relative importance of environmental and host predictors of root fungal community structure.Location: North American plains grasslands. Taxon: Foundation grasses -Andropogon gerardii, Bouteloua dactyloides, B. eriopoda, B. gracilis, and Schizachyrium scoparium and root fungi. Methods: At each of 24 sites representing three replicate 17°-latitudinal gradients, we collected roots from 12 individuals per species along five transects spaced 10 m apart (40 m × 40 m grid). We used next-generation sequencing of ITS2, direct fungal culturing from roots, and microscopy to survey fungi associated with grass roots. Results: Root-associated fungi did not follow the poleward declines in diversity documented for many animals and plants. Instead, host plant identity had the largest influence on fungal community structure. Edaphic factors outranked climate or host plant traits as correlates of fungal community structure; however, the relative importance of environmental predictors differed among plant species. As sampling approached host species range edges, fungal composition converged in similarity among individual plants of each grass species. Main conclusions: Environmental predictors of root-associated fungi depended strongly on host plant species identity. Biogeographic patterns in fungal composition suggested a homogenizing influence of stressors at host plant range limits. Resultspredict that communities of non-mycorrhizal, root-associated fungi in the North American plains will be more sensitive to future changes in host plant ranges and edaphic factors than to the direct effects of climate.

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Weak latitudinal gradients in insect herbivory for dominant rangeland grasses of North America

Cited by 7 publications

References 54 publications

Macroevolution of protective coloration across caterpillars reflects relationships with host plants

Macroevolution of protective coloration across caterpillars reflects relationships with host plants

Herbivory damage but not plant disease under experimental warming is dependent on weather for three subalpine grass species

Biogeography of root‐associated fungi in foundation grasses of North American plains

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