How much leaf area do insects eat? A data set of insect herbivory sampled globally with a standardized protocol

Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al., in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory, have compiled published studies regarding foliar removal and sampled data on global herbivory levels using a standardized protocol. However, in the review by Kozlov et al., only 15 sampling sites, comprising 33 plant species, were evaluated in tropical areas around the globe. In Brazil, which ranks first in terms of plant biodiversity, with a total of 46,097 species, almost half (43%) being endemic, a single data point was sampled, covering only two plant species. In an attempt to increase knowledge regarding herbivory in tropical plant species and to provide the raw data needed to test general hypotheses related to plant–herbivore interactions across large spatial scales, we proposed a joint, collaborative network to evaluate tropical herbivory. This network allowed us to update and expand the data on insect herbivory in tropical and temperate plant species. Our data set, collected with a standardized protocol, covers 45 sampling sites from nine countries and includes leaf herbivory measurements of 57,239 leaves from 209 species of vascular plants belonging to 65 families from tropical and temperate regions. They expand previous data sets by including a total of 32 sampling sites from tropical areas around the globe, comprising 152 species, 146 of them being sampled in Brazil. For temperate areas, it includes 13 sampling sites, comprising 59 species

The Deep Past Controls the Phylogenetic Structure of Present, Local Communities

International audienceCoexisting species may be evolutionarily proximate or distant, resulting in phylogenetically poor or rich communities. This variation is often considered to result from present assembly processes. We argue that, under certain conditions, deep-past processes might control the phylogenetic diversity of communities. First, deep-past effects involve macroevolutionary processes, such as diversification rate, niche conservatism, or dispersal, in the lineages that constitute communities. Second, deep-past processes in the respective region or in the habitat type play a role, for instance, through age, area, stability, or connectivity. Third, the deep past may affect communities via trophic interactions (i.e., communities of enemies or mutualists or communities of hosts). We suggest that deep-past effects can be identified in local communities by measuring phylogenetic diversity in different species pools. We also show how community phylogenetic diversity results in positive or negative eco-evolutionary feedback, and we identify present-day conservation challenges that may profit from a deep-time perspective

Evolutionary response to coexistence with close relatives: increased resistance against specialist herbivores without cost for climatic-stress resistance

Why can hosts coexist with conspecifics or phylogenetically proximate neighbours despite sharingspecialist enemies? Do the hosts evolve increased enemy resistance? If so, does this have costs interms of climatic-stress resistance, or in such neighbourhoods, does climatic-stress select for resis-tances that are multifunctional against climate and enemies? We studied oak (Quercus petraea)descendants from provenances of contrasting phylogenetic neighbourhoods and climates in a 25-year-old common garden. We found that descendants from conspecific or phylogenetically proxi-mate neighbourhoods had the toughest leaves and fewest leaf miners, but no reduction in cli-matic-stress resistance. Descendants from such neighbourhoods under cold or dry climates hadthe highest flavonol and anthocyanin levels and the thickest leaves. Overall, populations facingphylogenetically proximate neighbours can rapidly evolve herbivore resistance, without cost to cli-matic-stress resistance, but possibly facilitating resistance against cold and drought via multifunc-tional traits. Microevolution might hence facilitate ecological coexistence of close relatives andthereby macroevolutionary conservatism of niches

Phylogenetic structure of local communities predicts the size of the regional species pool

International audience1. The regional species pool is a set of species available in a region and ecologically suitable for growing in the particular environment occupied by a local community. As species pools are largely influenced by evolutionary processes such as the conservation of ecological niches within lineages we hypothesize that the size of the regional species pool increases with the variety of distinct phylogenetic lineages represented in a local community. We contrast this with hypotheses invoking diversification of individual lineages within environments or stochastic present-day assembly of local communities. 2. We calculated phylogenetic distinctness for a local community as the number of nodes separating two species averaged over all pairwise comparisons across a phylogenetic topology of a regional flora. We calculated the size of the regional species pool for a local community as the number of species in the regional flora that share the ecological niche position of the species constituting the local community. 3. Analysing field-layer communities across a wide range of environments, we indeed found that local communities composed of phylogenetically highly distinct species recruit from larger species pools than communities of low phylogenetic distinctness. Accounting for the presence of two particularly diversifying lineages (Poaceae and Cyperaceae) confirmed these results. 4. These results help us to understand how the species pool was assembled throughout evolution in different types of environments (immigration vs. in situ radiation of individual lineages). 5. The phylogenetic approach is of large practical value to infer the size of the regional species pool because phylogenies have become available for many groups of species worldwide, while knowledge of the species' ecological requirements or habitat affiliation (needed for the classical definition of species pools) is often still lacking. 6. Synthesis. We show that the size of the regional species pool can be predicted by the average phylogenetic distinctness between the species present in a local community. This approach contributes to the understanding of the causes of species richness in regional species pools and local communities. The approach is also an important tool for determining the size of the regional species pool when parameters other than species phylogeny are not known

Data from: Degree of specialization is related to body size in herbivorous insects: a phylogenetic confirmation

Numerous studies have suggested a general relationship between the degree of host specialization and body size in herbivorous animals. In insects, smaller species are usually shown to be more specialized than larger-bodied ones. Various hypotheses have attempted to explain this pattern but rigorous proof of the body size-diet breadth relationship has been lacking, primarily because the scarceness of reliable phylogenetic information has precluded formal comparative analyses. Explicitly using phylogenetic information for a group of herbivores (geometrid moths) and their host plant range, we perform a comparative analysis to study the body size-diet breadth relationship. Considering several alternative measures of body size and diet breadth, our results convincingly demonstrate without previous methodological issues – a first for any taxon – a positive association between these traits, which has implications for evaluating various central aspects of the evolutionary ecology of herbivorous insects. We additionally demonstrate how the methods used in this study can be applied in assessing hypotheses to explain the body size-diet breadth relationship. By analyzing the relationship in tree-feeders alone and finding that the positive relationship remains, the result suggests that the body size-diet breadth relationship is not solely driven by the type of host plant that species feed on

IDH

Previously unpublished IDH sequence

Novel insights into post-glacial vegetation change: functional and phylogenetic diversity in pollen records

QuestionHow do pollen-based functional and phylogenetic diversity help to explain post-glacial vegetation change in relation to climate and human influence? LocationEstonia and Latvia, NE Europe. MethodsWe used a data set of 1062 pollen samples from 20 sites covering the last 14500yrs to estimate plant richness, evenness, functional and phylogenetic diversity (community-weighted mean and mean pair-wise distance). We adjusted existing functional and phylogenetic diversity measures for the pollen data and tested the methods with a simulation study. The simulations showed that species-based and pollen-based diversity estimates were all significantly positively correlated. ResultsThe Late Glacial (14500-11650cal. yr BP) and the mid-Holocene (8000-4000cal. yr BP) periods showed contrasting values for most of the diversity components, and several diversity estimates were strongly associated with climate. The cold climate during the Late Glacial led to high phylogenetic diversity, and relatively low functional diversity. Climate warming during the transition from the Late Glacial to the Holocene was followed by a decrease in phylogenetic diversity but an increase in functional diversity based on plant height and seed weight. Increasing human impact in the late Holocene was associated with an increase in plant richness and decreases in functional diversity based on plant height and seed weight and in phylogenetic diversity of herbs. ConclusionsPollen-based functional and phylogenetic diversity provide novel insights into post-glacial vegetation change and its drivers. Both functional and phylogenetic diversity were closely related to climatic conditions, suggesting that trait differences play an important role in long-term community response to climate change. Our results indicate that human impact during the last two millennia has influenced functional and phylogenetic diversity negatively by suppressing plants with certain traits (functional convergence) and giving advantage to plants from certain phylogenetic lineages. We see great potential in the further development of functional and phylogenetic diversity methods for pollen data

Phylogenetic structure of plant communities in a dryland

Aridity is a critical driver of the diversity and composition of plant communities. However, how aridity influences the phylogenetic structure of functional groups (i.e. annual and perennial species) is far less understood than its effects on species richness. As perennials have to endure stressful conditions during the summer drought, as opposed to annuals that avoid it, they may be subjected to stronger environmental filtering. In contrast, annuals may be more susceptible to interannual climatic variability. Here we studied the phylogenetic structure of the annual and perennial components of understorey plant communities, along a regional aridity gradient in Mediterranean drylands. Specifically, we asked: (1) How do species richness (S) and phylogenetic structure (PS) of annuals and perennials in plant communities respond to aridity? (2) What is the contribution of other climatic and topo-edaphic variables in predicting S and PS for both components? (3) How does the taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover of annuals and perennials vary with spatial and environmental distances? We assessed annuals' and perennials' species richness, the phylogenetic structure at deep and shallow phylogenetic levels, and taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover along spatial and environmental distances. We found no relationship between annuals' richness and aridity, whereas perennials' richness showed a unimodal pattern. The phylogenetic structure of annuals and perennials showed contrasting responses to aridity and negatively correlated with topo-edaphic variables. We found phylogenetic clustering at intermediate-to-higher aridity levels for annuals, and at lower aridity levels for perennials. Both taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover in annuals and perennials correlated with the environmental distance rather than with spatial distance between communities, suggesting adaptation to local factors. Overall, our results show a decoupling in the response of the phylogenetic structure of annual and perennial components of plant communities to aridity in Mediterranean drylands. Our findings have significant implications for land management strategies under climate change.FCT -Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia in the frame of the project PTDC/AAG-GLO/0045/2014 and UIDB/00329/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Appendix B. Significant pairwise species associations and P values from spatially informed generalized estimation equations (GEEs) for above- and belowground data.

Significant pairwise species associations and P values from spatially informed generalized estimation equations (GEEs) for above- and belowground data

COI

Previously unpublished COI sequence