Community structure of insect herbivores is driven by conservatism, escalation and divergence of defensive traits in Ficus

Escalation (macroevolutionary increase) or divergence (disparity between relatives) in trait values are two frequent outcomes of the plant‐herbivore arms race. We studied the defences and caterpillars associated with 21 sympatric New Guinean figs. Herbivore generalists were concentrated on hosts with low protease and oxidative activity. The distribution of specialists correlated with phylogeny, protease and trichomes. Additionally, highly specialised Asota moths used alkaloid rich plants. The evolution of proteases was conserved, alkaloid diversity has escalated across the studied species, oxidative activity has escalated within one clade, and trichomes have diverged across the phylogeny. Herbivore specificity correlated with their response to host defences: escalating traits largely affected generalists and divergent traits specialists; but the effect of escalating traits on extreme specialists was positive. In turn, the evolution of defences in Ficus can be driven towards both escalation and divergence in individual traits, in combination providing protection against a broad spectrum of herbivores.</div

Kradibia ex F. wassa COI alignment

COI sequences from Kradibia wasps from F. wassa for jMOTU analysi

Ceratosolen ex F. arfakensis

VCF file for Ceratosolen sp. samples from F. arfakensis used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)

F. arfarkensis vcf file

VCF file for Ficus arfakensis samples used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)

wasfig

VCF file for Ficus wassa samples used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)

Ceratosolen wasps FASTA alignment

Ceratosolen wasps alignment used for RAxML phylogenie

F. itoana complex VCF file

VCF file for Ficus itoana complex samples used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)

Genotype data for Ficus arfakensis

Genotype data for Ficus arfakensis, data for 8 microsatellite loci and 58 individuals with missing data coded as -9. The first column lists individuals and the second column lists the elevational site of each individual. Formatted for STRUCTURE

Ceratosolen ex F. trichocerasa

VCF file for Ceratosolen sp. samples from Ficus trichocerasa used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)

Kradibia ex F. wassa

VCF file for Kradibia spp. samples from Ficus wassa used for calculating FST using VCFTools, and FineRADstructure (after conversion to TSV file according to custom script)