1. Plant diversity loss can alter higher trophic-level communities via non-random species interactions, which in turn may cascade to affect key ecosystem functions. These non-random linkages might be best captured by patterns of phylogenetic diversity, which take into account co-evolutionary dependencies. However, lack of adequate phylogenetic data of higher trophic levels hampers our mechanistic understanding of biodiversity relationships in species-rich ecosystems.2. We used DNA barcoding to generate data on the phylogenetic diversity of lepidopteran caterpillars in a large-scale forest biodiversity experiment in subtropical China. We analysed how different metrics of lepidopteran phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD, MPD, MNTD) and taxonomic diversity were influenced by multiple components of tree diversity (taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic). 3. Our data from six sampling periods represent 7,204 mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences of lepidopteran larvae, clustered into 461 molecular operational taxonomic units. Lepidopteran abundance, the effective number of species (irrespective of the focus on rare or common species) and Faith's PD and MPD (reflecting basal evolutionary splits), but not MNTD (reflecting recent evolutionary splits), significantly increased with experimentally manipulated | 2709 Journal of Ecology WANG et Al.
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