Invasive stink bug favors naïve plants: Testing the role of plant geographic origin in diverse, managed environments

Abstract

With the introduction and establishment of exotic species, most ecosystems now contain both native and exotic plants and herbivores. Recent research identifies several factors that govern how specialist herbivores switch host plants upon introduction. Predicting the feeding ecology and impacts of introduced generalist species, however, remains difficult. Here, we examine how plant geographic origin, an indicator of shared co-evolutionary history, influences patterns of host use by a generalist, invasive herbivore, while accounting for variation in plant availability. The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, is a highly polyphagous Asian herbivore and an economically important invasive pest in North America and Europe. In visual surveys of 220 plant taxa in commercial nurseries in Maryland, USA, H. halys was more abundant on non-Asian plants and selected these over Asian plants. The relationship between the relative use of plants and their availability was strongly positive but depended also on plant origin at two of our three sites, where the higher relative use of non-Asian plants was greatest for highly abundant taxa. These results highlight the importance of considering both plant origin and relative abundance in understanding the selection of host plants by invasive generalist herbivores in diverse, natural and urban forests.

Impact of the Invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug in North America and Europe: History, Biology, Ecology, and Management

“…BMSB utilizes common plant families such as Rosaceae and Sapindaceae, which include wild hosts such as boxelder, big leaf maple, and English hawthorn and cultivated hosts such as apples, peaches, nectarines, pears, and grapes. An electivity analysis identified that BMSB is more commonly found on non-Asian host plants than on Asian host plants in the United States (90). Regardless of host plant, BMSB females oviposit more frequently on crops with long fruiting periods, including some fruiting vegetables (163).…”

Urbanisation drivers and underlying mechanisms of terrestrial insect diversity loss in cities

“…Urban plant communities are usually dominated by exotic species (Smith et al ., 2006a; Potgieter et al ., 2017). Alien plants frequently sustain lower abundance and diversity of insects than their native counterparts, thus impacting ecological interactions and producing detrimental effects on urban biodiversity (Chalker‐Scott, 2015; MacIvor et al ., 2015; but see Martinson et al ., 2016).…”

Host Preferences of Spotted Lanternfly and Risk Assessment of Potential Tree Hosts in Managed and Semi-Natural Landscapes

“…Different assemblages of plants may be present in the native and invaded ranges, and preferences for plants shared across the global range of the species may not be consistent. Even for polyphagous species, use of plants typically is non-uniform and may change across ontogeny, may depend on the locally available plants, or may be a function of plant species abundance or geographic provenance (Mason et al 2011;Martinson et al 2016Martinson et al , 2020.…”