Response to Comment on "Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests?"

Novotný, Vojtěch; Drozd, Pavel; Miller, Scott E.; Kulfan, Miroslav; Janda, Milan; Basset, Yves; Weiblen, George D.

doi:10.1126/science.1139702

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The only significant effect observed was that the abundance of sap-sucking herbivores was negatively affected by tree density. According to some studies (Price 2002;Cuevas-Reyes et al 2004;Boege 2005; but see Langellotto and Denno 2004), a positive effect of heterogeneity and complexity of the habitat on the richness and abundance of insect herbivore was expected, as the richness and abundance of trees are an indicator of the variety and availability of resources in the habitat for insect herbivores (Novotny et al 2003(Novotny et al , 2006(Novotny et al , 2007. Herbivore insects use canopy as source of food, shelter against climate variations and natural enemies and; therefore, this strata contribute for the maintenance of herbivore insects' richness and abundance (Stenseth 1980;Price 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Several forest traits, such as the presence of different vertical strata (Basset et al 2003b;Neves et al 2014), the richness and density of tree species (Novotny et al 2006(Novotny et al , 2007Sobek et al 2009) as well as host plant height and architecture (Campos et al 2006;Costa et al 2011;Neves et al 2014), have been used to explain the variation in herbivore insect abundance and distribution. According to habitat heterogeneity hypothesis, a high diversity of herbivore insects is expected in heterogeneous habitats as they provide a wider variety of conditions and resources to be explored, allowing higher species coexistence (Tews et al 2004;Ricklefs and Marquis 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Change in herbivore insect communities from adjacent habitats in a transitional region

Leal

Fagundes

Neves

2015

Arthropod-Plant Interactions

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Ecotonal areas between habitats vary in floristic composition and phenological patterns of the vegetation. In these regions, the habitat structure and plant phenology potentially affect the diversity of associated herbivore insects guilds (chewing and sap-sucking). In this study, the following hypotheses were tested in three habitats (cerrado sensu strictu, dry forest and riparian forest) in a CerradoCaatinga transitional area: (1) There is a variation in composition, richness and abundance of herbivore insects associated with the canopy among adjacent habitats; (2) habitats with higher variation in canopy cover support lower richness and abundance of herbivore insects; (3) habitats with more tree species and higher tree density support higher richness and abundance of herbivore insects; and (4) differences in species composition of herbivore insects among adjacent habitats are the main source of diversity in transitional habitats. The community of herbivore insects differed among the habitats, being similar between riparian and dry forests and different from cerrado. Canopy cover variation, richness and density of trees did not influence richness and abundance of chewing herbivores. A negative effect of canopy cover variation was observed in richness and abundance of sap-sucking herbivore insects, and a negative effect of tree density was observed on abundance of sap-sucking herbivore insects. A higher importance of beta diversity among habitats was observed if compared to beta diversity within habitats (54 %). This study points out that strategies of conservation must consider the entire vegetation mosaics to protect a higher number of species, and to keep these regions with high diversity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change in herbivore insect communities from adjacent habitats in a transitional region

Leal

Fagundes

Neves

2015

Arthropod-Plant Interactions

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“…This option may entail a pitfall: given that more plant species were left out of the tropical than the temperate survey, and that most of those are rare hosts, the results of Novotny et al. will only hold for their entire communities if insect richness and specialization are not affected by host abundance (Norton & Didham 2007; Novotny et al. 2007b).…”

Section: It Ain't Necessarily Somentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1993) may inform us of dispersal over evolutionary time (as reflected in the range sizes of different species), it reveals little about dispersal in ecological time (with respect to the contemporary flow of individuals among extant populations). Novotny et al. (2006, 2007b; see also Novotny & Weiblen 2005) argue that low beta‐diversity in homogeneous environments implies that dispersal limitation is not a key constraint for herbivorous insects.…”

Section: Towards Improved Broadscale Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four ways towards tropical herbivore megadiversity

Lewinsohn¹,

Roslin²

2008

Ecology Letters

168

191

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Most multicellular species alive are tropical arthropods associated with plants. Hence, the host-specificity of these species, and their diversity at different scales, are keys to understanding the assembly structure of global biodiversity. We present a comprehensive scheme in which tropical herbivore megadiversity can be partitioned into the following components: (A) more host plant species per se, (B) more arthropod species per plant species, (C) higher host specificity of herbivores, or (D) higher species turnover (beta diversity) in the tropics than in the temperate zone. We scrutinize recent studies addressing each component and identify methodological differences among them. We find substantial support for the importance of component A, more tropical host species. A meta-analysis of published results reveals intermediate to high correlations between plant and herbivore diversity, accounting for up to 60% of the variation in insect species richness. Support for other factors is mixed, with studies too scarce and approaches too uneven to allow for quantitative summaries. More research on individual components is unlikely to resolve their relative contribution to overall herbivore diversity. Instead, we call for the adoption of more coherent methods that avoid pitfalls for larger-scale comparisons, for studies assessing different components together rather than singly, and for studies that investigate herbivore beta-diversity (component D) in a more comprehensive perspective.

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“…In the most extensive syntheses to 81 date, the probability of sharing a pest or pathogen between two host plants decays strongly with 82 phylogenetic distance (Parker and Gilbert 2004, Novotny et al 2006, Gilbert and Webb 2007, 83 Gilbert et al 2012). This pattern is expected to be more pronounced under broader taxonomic 84 samples, and less pronounced under smaller taxonomic samples (e.g., a single genus).…”

Section: Introduction 40mentioning

confidence: 99%

How does habitat filtering affect the detection of conspecific and phylogenetic density dependence?

Swenson

Brown

et al. 2016

Ecology

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15Conspecific negative density-dependence (CNDD) has been recognized as a key mechanism 16 underlying species coexistence, especially in tropical forests. Recently, some studies have 17 reported that seedling survival is also negatively correlated with the phylogenetic relatedness 18 between neighbors and focal individuals -termed phylogenetic negative density-dependence 19 (PNDD). In contrast to CNDD or PNDD, shared habitat requirements between closely related 20 individuals are thought to be a cause of observed positive effects of closely related neighbors, 21 which may affect the strength and detectability of CNDD or PNDD. In order to investigate the 22 relative importance of these mechanisms for tropical tree seedling survival, we used generalized 23 linear mixed models to analyze how the survival of more than 10,000 seedlings of woody plant 24 species related to neighborhood and habitat variables in a tropical rainforest in southwest China. 25By comparing models with and without habitat variables, we tested how habitat filtering affected 26 the detection of CNDD and PNDD. The best-fitting model suggested that CNDD and habitat 27 filtering played key roles in seedling survival, but that, contrary to our expectations, phylogenetic 28 positive density-dependence (PPDD) had a distinct and important effect. While habitat filtering 29 affected the detection of CNDD by decreasing its apparent strength, it did not explain the 30 positive effects of closely-related neighbors. Our results demonstrate that a failure to control for 31 habitat variables and phylogenetic relationships may obscure the importance of conspecific and 32 heterospecific neighbor densities for seedling survival.

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Response to Comment on "Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests?"

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Change in herbivore insect communities from adjacent habitats in a transitional region

Change in herbivore insect communities from adjacent habitats in a transitional region

Four ways towards tropical herbivore megadiversity

How does habitat filtering affect the detection of conspecific and phylogenetic density dependence?

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