How specialised must natural enemies be to facilitate coexistence among plants?

Sedio, Brian E.; Ostling, Annette

doi:10.1111/ele.12130

Cited by 84 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…However, while these analyses could document the occurrence of a mechanism, they cannot usually assess its relative importance for community dynamics and spatial structure, but see e.g. [48,49]. Statistical significance does not necessarily imply that the effect also has a major impact on the dynamics of the system [5].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest

2015

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Assessing the relative importance of different processes that determine the spatial distribution of species and the dynamics in highly diverse plant communities remains a challenging question in ecology. Previous modelling approaches often focused on single aggregated forest diversity patterns that convey limited information on the underlying dynamic processes. Here, we use recent advances in inference for stochastic simulation models to evaluate the ability of a spatially explicit and spatially continuous neutral model to quantitatively predict six spatial and non-spatial patterns observed at the 50 ha tropical forest plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. The patterns capture different aspects of forest dynamics and biodiversity structure, such as annual mortality rate, species richness, species abundance distribution, beta-diversity and the species–area relationship (SAR). The model correctly predicted each pattern independently and up to five patterns simultaneously. However, the model was unable to match the SAR and beta-diversity simultaneously. Our study moves previous theory towards a dynamic spatial theory of biodiversity and demonstrates the value of spatial data to identify ecological processes. This opens up new avenues to evaluate the consequences of additional process for community assembly and dynamics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest

2015

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“…Furthermore, although other animals consume plants, mammals and insects are by far the herbivore groups that impact plants the most (31). I anticipated that generalized (mammal) herbivory should not favor plant diversity as much as specialized (insect) herbivory, because with generalists there is reduced enemy partitioning in plants and defense niche overlap should increase (6,32).…”

Section: Relating Herbivore Resource Partitioning To Plant Diversity Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the factors that promote the diversity of herbivorous insects and plants in tropical forests

Becerra

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

105

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Some of the most fascinating and challenging questions in ecology are why biodiversity is highest in tropical forests and whether the factors involved are unique to these habitats. I did a worldwide test of the hypotheses that plant community divergence in antiherbivore traits results in higher insect herbivore diversity, and that predominant attack by specialized herbivores promotes plant richness. I found strong correlative support for both ideas. Butterfly diversity was greatest in regions where the community average species-pairwise dissimilarity in antiherbivore traits among plant species was highest. There was also a strong positive relationship between specialized (insect) vs. generalized (mammal) herbivores and plant richness. Regions where herbivory impact by mammals was higher than that of insects tended to have lower plant diversities. In contrast, regions in which insects are the main consumers, particularly in the Central and South American tropics, had the highest plant richness. Latitude did not explain any residual variance in insect or plant richness. The strong connections found between insect specialization, plant defense divergence, and plant and insect diversities suggest that increasing our understanding of the ecology of biological communities can aid in considerations of how to preserve biodiversity in the future.plant diversity | insect diversity | tropical forests | latitudinal diversity gradient | insect specialization

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“…Enemy–host interactions, particularly those of insect herbivores, are limited by the capacity for enemies to overcome plant defenses, including noxious secondary metabolites (Barrett and Heil ). Plant species with similar defenses are likely to share enemies and to experience competition mediated by those shared enemies (Sedio and Ostling ). Hence, species niche differences defined by secondary chemistry might contribute to the diversity of woody plant species occurring locally in tropical forests.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of variation in foliar secondary chemistry in a tropical forest tree community

Sedio

Echeverri

Boya

et al. 2017

Ecology

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101

153

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Abstract. Specialist herbivores and pathogens could induce negative conspecific density dependence among their hosts and thereby contribute to the diversity of plant communities. A small number of hyperdiverse genera comprise a large portion of tree diversity in tropical forests. These closely related congeners are likely to share natural enemies. Diverse defenses could still allow congeners to partition niche space defined by natural enemies, but interspecific differences in defenses would have to exceed intraspecific variation in defenses. We ask whether interspecific variation in secondary chemistry exceeds intraspecific variation for species from four hyperdiverse tropical tree genera. We used novel methods to quantify chemical structural similarity for all compounds present in methanol extracts of leaf tissue. We sought to maximize intraspecific variation by selecting conspecific leaves from different ontogenetic stages (expanding immature vs. fully hardened mature), different light environments (deep understory shade vs. large forest gaps), and different seasons (dry vs. wet). Chemical structural similarity differed with ontogeny, light environment, and season, but interspecific differences including those among congeneric species were much larger. Our results suggest that species differences in secondary chemistry are large relative to within-species variation, perhaps sufficiently large to permit niche segregation among congeneric tree species based on chemical defenses.

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How specialised must natural enemies be to facilitate coexistence among plants?

Cited by 84 publications

References 51 publications

Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest

Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest

On the factors that promote the diversity of herbivorous insects and plants in tropical forests

Sources of variation in foliar secondary chemistry in a tropical forest tree community

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