Chemical phenotype as important and dynamic niche dimension of plants

Abstract

Niche theory considering the traits of species and individuals provides a powerful tool to integrate ecology and evolution of species. In plant ecology, morphological and physiological traits are commonly considered as niche dimensions, whereas phytochemical traits are mostly neglected in this context despite their pivotal functions in plant responses to their environment and in mediating interactions. The diversity of plant phytochemicals can thus mediate three key processes: niche choice, conformance and construction. Here, we integrate frameworks from niche theory with chemical ecology and argue that plants use their individual-specific diversity in phytochemicals (chemodiversity) for different niche realization processes. Our concept has important implications for ecosystem processes and stability and increases the predictive ability of chemical ecology.

Intraspecific chemodiversity provides plant individual- and neighbourhood-mediated associational resistance towards aphids

“…Plants show a huge variation in natural products both interspecifically and intraspecifically, which affects interactions with other organisms across different trophic levels ( Moore et al., 2014 ; Glassmire et al., 2016 ; Schneider et al., 2021 ). Such phytochemical diversity, also called chemodiversity ( Müller and Junker, 2022 ), is recently increasingly studied, combining omics approaches with ecological concepts and applying diversity indices used in biodiversity research ( Hilker, 2014 ; Wetzel and Whitehead, 2020 ). Frameworks for chemodiversity research have been developed that highlight the functional levels of plant chemodiversity and the spatial and temporal factors influencing it ( Kessler and Kalske, 2018 ).…”

Intraspecific chemodiversity provides plant individual- and neighbourhood-mediated associational resistance towards aphids

“…Plants show a huge variation in natural products both interspecifically and intraspecifically, which affects interactions with other organisms across different trophic levels (Schneider et al, 2021, Moore et al, 2014, Glassmire et al, 2016). Such phytochemical diversity, also called chemodiversity (Müller and Junker, 2022), is recently increasingly studied, combining omics approaches with ecological concepts and applying diversity indices developed for biodiversity research (Hilker, 2014, Wetzel and Whitehead, 2020). Plants are confronted with numerous generalist and specialist antagonists, and are thus subjected to a multitude of selective pressures.…”

Quantifying chemodiversity considering biochemical and structural properties of compounds with the R package chemodiv

“…It is also worth mentioning that we have focused on quantifying diversity on the level of individual samples, often likely to represent individual plants. Others have instead utilized phytochemical compounds as functional traits to measure diversity on a community level (Salazar et al ., 2016), representing a complementary approach which can answer questions related to trait‐based ecology and niche processes (Müller & Junker, 2022; Walker et al ., 2022).…”