Species-level detection rates for termite DNA in ant guts.

<p>Only ant species with >5 individuals presented here, with the exception of known termite predators in the genera <i>Hypoponera</i>, and <i>Odontomachus</i>.</p><p>*Ant species for which multiple cryptic molecular clades were present, but for which no morphological correlates were found. Since not all ant individuals were sequenced, the morphological identifications for these species were retained.</p><p>Species-level detection rates for termite DNA in ant guts.</p

Bipartite hypogeic (below soil-surface) food web visualising ant predation on termites in rain forest in Gabon.

<p>For termites (lower level), abbreviations are as follows. Ano = <i>Anoplotermes</i> group; Mac = Macrotermitinae; Ter = Termitinae; Rhi = Rhinotermitidae. For ants, see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0122533#pone.0122533.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a> for full genus names. Even with this small dataset there are three species of ants that prey on more than one termite species, and two termite species that are preyed on by multiple ant species. Note that <i>Pheidole</i> sp 8 is included here, although it was not included in statistical analyses, since we tested fewer than six ant individuals for this species.</p

Maximum likelihood phylogeny of termites consumed by ants based on COII sequences.

<p>Phylogeny rooted to Rhinotermitidae. Node values give bootstrap support. Scale bar represents substitutions per site based on the GTR+I+G model.</p

phylogeny

Phylogeny tre file

Plant phylogeny from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

The phylogeny of plant hosts sampled in this study for geometrids or pyraloids

Variation in oxidative activity with time and species from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

A histogram of mean oxidative activity (mg/g) (± one s.e.) for all 88 species analysed

Supplementary Material Figure Legends from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

A long-term goal in evolutionary ecology is to explain the incredible diversity of insect herbivores and patterns of plant host use in speciose groups like tropical Lepidoptera. Here, we used standardized food-web data, multigene phylogenies of both trophic levels and plant chemistry data to model interactions between Lepidoptera larvae (caterpillars) from two lineages (Geometridae and Pyraloidea) and plants in a species-rich lowland rainforest in New Guinea. Model parameters were used to make and test blind predictions for two hectares of an exhaustively sampled forest. For pyraloids, we relied on phylogeny alone and predicted 54% of species-level interactions, translating to 79% of all trophic links for individual insects, by sampling insects from only 15% of local woody plant diversity. The phylogenetic distribution of host-plant associations in polyphagous geometrids was less conserved, reducing accuracy. In a truly quantitative food web, only 40% of pair-wise interactions were described correctly in geometrids. Polyphenol oxidative activity (but not protein precipitation capacity) was important for understanding the occurrence of geometrids (but not pyraloids) across their hosts. When both foliar chemistry and plant phylogeny were included, we predicted geometrid–plant occurrence with 89% concordance. Such models help to test macroevolutionary hypotheses at the community level

Logistic regression plots from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

Plots of different fitted quasibinomial regressions for both oxidative activity (mg/g) and protein precipitation (mg/g)

Variation in protein precipitation with time and species from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

A histogram of mean protein precipitation (mg/g) (± one s.e.) for all 88 species analysed

Flow chart for PBLM analysis from Varyingly hungry caterpillars: predictive models and foliar chemistry suggest how to eat a rainforest

A schematic diagram of our analytical steps for predicting network structure