Plant‐herbivore synchrony and selection on plant flowering phenology

Fogelström, Elsa; Olofsson, Martin; Posledovich, Diana; Wiklund, Christer; Dahlgren, Johan P.; Ehrlén, Johan

doi:10.1002/ecy.1676

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(99 reference statements)

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“…It is important to note that it is difficult to predict the fitness effects for the butterfly in the cases where we observed a decrease in the number of days between butterflies and plants with temperature increase, but it will most likely influence the relative host availability (Liu et al., ; Warren et al., ). The period of host plant suitability is an essential component of the herbivore's fitness and the present oviposition experiment, together with previous studies (Courtney, ; Dempster, ; Fogelström et al., ; Stålhandske et al., ; Wiklund & Åhrberg, ) confirm that the females’ willingness to oviposit is strongly dependent on the phenological stage of the flowering host plant. In essence, the importance of a plant individual being in the most attractive stage of flowering is likely to override any difference in female preference for different plants species (Stålhandske et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Phenological synchrony between a butterfly and its host plants: Experimental test of effects of spring temperature

Posledovich

Toftegaard

Wiklund

et al. 2017

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Abstract1. Climate-driven changes in the relative phenologies of interacting species may potentially alter the outcome of species interactions.2. Phenotypic plasticity is expected to be important for short-term response to new climate conditions, and differences between species in plasticity are likely to influence their temporal overlap and interaction patterns. As reaction norms of interacting species may be locally adapted, any such climate-induced change in interaction patterns may vary among localities. However, consequences of spatial variation in plastic responses for species interactions are understudied.3. We experimentally explored how temperature affected synchrony between spring emergence of a butterfly, Anthocharis cardamines, and onset of flowering of five of its host plant species across a latitudinal gradient. We also studied potential effects on synchrony if climate-driven northward expansions would be faster in the butterflies than in host plants. Lastly, to assess how changes in synchrony influence host use we carried out an experiment to examine the importance of the developmental stage of plant reproductive structures for butterfly oviposition preference.4. In southern locations, the butterflies were well-synchronized with the majority of their local host plant species across temperatures, suggesting that thermal plasticity in butterfly development matches oviposition to host plant development and that thermal reaction norms of insects and plants result in similar advancement of spring phenology in response to warming. In the most northern region, however, relative phenology between the butterfly and two of its host plant species changed with increased temperature. We also show that the developmental stage of plants was important for egg-laying, and conclude that temperature-induced changes in synchrony in the northernmost region are likely to lead to shifts in host use in A. cardamines if spring temperatures become warmer. Northern expansion of butterfly populations might possibly have a positive effect on keeping up with host plant phenology with more northern host plant populations.5. Considering that the majority of insect herbivores exploit multiple plant species differing in their phenological response to spring temperatures, temperature-induced changes in synchrony might lead to shifts in host use and changes in species interactions in many temperate communities.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Phenological synchrony between a butterfly and its host plants: Experimental test of effects of spring temperature

Posledovich

Toftegaard

Wiklund

et al. 2017

Journal of Animal Ecology

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“…Still, in C. pratensis and A. hirsuta where mean development ranged from being more advanced than the preferred stage to being less advanced, our results suggest that butterfly preference within populations might often shift from plants with earlier phenology to plants with later phenology. Our results based on field observations are also congruent with the results of an experiment where the developmental stage of genetically identical populations C. pratensis relative to A. cardamines was manipulated to examine the effects of relative timing on butterfly preferences and selection (Fogelström et al 2017). The results of our study show that phenotypic preferences of butterflies for plant reproductive developmental stage were unimodal and independent of relative timing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Butterfly–host plant synchrony determines patterns of host use across years and regions

Toftegaard

Posledovich

Navarro‐Cano

et al. 2018

Oikos

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Variation in the degree of synchrony among host plants and herbivores can disrupt or intensify species interactions, alter the strength of natural selection on traits associated with phenological timing, and drive novel host plant associations. We used field observations from three regions during four seasons to examine how timing of the butterfly herbivore Anthocharis cardamines relative to six host plant species (Arabis hirsuta, Cardamine pratensis, Arabis glabra, Arabidopsis thaliana, Thlaspi caerulescens and Capsella bursa‐pastoris) influenced host species use and the choice of host plant individuals within populations. Butterflies laid a larger fraction of their eggs on species that were closer to the butterfly's preferred stage of development than on other host species. Within host plant populations, butterflies showed a stronger preference for individuals with a late phenology when plants within the population were on average more developed at the time of butterfly flight. Our results suggest that changes in synchrony between herbivores and their host plants are associated with changes in both host species use and the choice of host plant individuals differing in phenology within populations. This is likely to be an important mechanism generating variation in interaction intensities and trait selection in the wild, and therefore also relevant for understanding how anthropogenic induced changes, such as global warming, will influence natural communities.

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“…For example, Fogelström et al. () showed that differences in relative phenology of a perennial herb and its seed predator influenced the magnitude and direction of selection on flowering phenology.…”

Section: Using Phenological Distributions and Reaction Norms To Answementioning

confidence: 99%

“…). Studies of phenology focus on issues ranging from natural selection (e.g., Valdés and Ehrlén, ) to species interactions (e.g., Reed et al. ), community structure and ecosystem function, and changes in phenology over time and space (e.g., CaraDonna et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

Inouye

Ehrlén

Underwood

2019

Ecological Monographs

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Measures of the seasonal timing of biological events are key to addressing questions about how phenology evolves, modifies species interactions, and mediates biological responses to climate change. Phenology is often characterized in terms of discrete events, such as a date of first flowering or arrival of first migrants. We discuss how phenological events that are typically measured at the population or species level arise from distributions of phenological events across seasons, and from norms of reaction of these phenological events across environments. We argue that individual variation in phenological distributions and reaction norms has important implications for how we should collect, analyze, and interpret phenological information. Regarding phenology as a reaction norm rather than one year's specific values implies that selection acts on the phenologies that an individual expresses over its lifetime. To understand how climate change is likely to influence phenology, we need to consider not only plastic responses along the reaction norm but changes in the reaction norm itself. We show that when individuals vary in their reaction norms, correlations between reaction norm elevation and slope make first events particularly poor estimators of population sensitivity to climate change, and variation in slopes can obscure the pattern of selection on phenology. We also show that knowing the shape of the distribution of phenological events across the season is important for predicting biologically important phenological mismatches with climate change. Last, because phenological events are parts of a continuous developmental process, we suggest that the approach of measuring phenology by recording developmental stages of individuals in a population at a single point in time should be used more widely. We conclude that failure to account for phenological distributions and reaction norms may lead to overinterpretation of metrics based on single events, such as commonly recorded first event dates, and may confound meta‐analyses that use a range of metrics. Rather than prescribing a single universal approach to studying phenology, we point out limitations of inferences based on single metrics and encourage work that considers the multivariate nature of phenology and more tightly links data collection and analyses with biological hypotheses.

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Plant‐herbivore synchrony and selection on plant flowering phenology

Cited by 9 publications

References 40 publications

Phenological synchrony between a butterfly and its host plants: Experimental test of effects of spring temperature

Phenological synchrony between a butterfly and its host plants: Experimental test of effects of spring temperature

Butterfly–host plant synchrony determines patterns of host use across years and regions

Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

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