Diversity of Gall-Inducing Insects Associated With a Widely Distributed Tropical Tree Species: Testing the Environmental Stress Hypothesis
Autor: | Magno Augusto Zazá Borges, Walisson Kenedy Siqueira, G. Wilson Fernandes, Pablo Cuevas-Reyes, Letícia F Ramos Leite, Marcílio Fagundes, Walter Santos de Araújo |
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Rok vydání: | 2020 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Insecta media_common.quotation_subject Insect 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Trees Soil Abundance (ecology) Animals Gall Herbivory Ecosystem Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics media_common Abiotic component Ecology biology 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology fungi food and beverages Biodiversity Fabaceae biology.organism_classification Copaifera langsdorffii Habitat Insect Science Species richness |
Zdroj: | Environmental Entomology. 49:838-847 |
ISSN: | 1938-2936 0046-225X |
DOI: | 10.1093/ee/nvaa072 |
Popis: | Abiotic factors can affect plant performance and cause stress, which in turn affects plant–herbivore interactions. The Environmental Stress Hypothesis (ESH) predicts that gall-inducing insect diversity will be greater on host plants that grow in stressful habitats. We tested this hypothesis, considering both historical and ecological scales, using the plant Copaifera langsdorffii Desf. (Fabaceae) as a model because it has a wide geographic distribution and is a super-host of gall-inducing insects. According to the ESH, we predicted that 1) on a historical scale, the diversity of gall-inducing insects will be higher in habitats with greater environmental stress and 2) on an ecological scale, gall-inducing insect diversity will be greater on plants that possess greater levels of foliar sclerophylly. We sampled gall-inducing insects on plants of C. langsdorffii in five sites with different levels of water and soil nutrient availability and separated from each other by a distance of up to 470 km. The composition, richness, and abundance of gall-inducing insects varied among study sites. Plants located in more stressful habitats had higher levels of foliar sclerophylly; but richness and abundance of gall-inducing insects were not affected by host plant sclerophylly. Habitat stress was a good predictor of gall-inducing insect diversity on a regional scale, thus corroborating the first prediction of the ESH. No relationship was found between plant sclerophylly and gall-inducing insect diversity within habitats. Therefore, on a local scale, we did not find support for our second prediction related to the ESH. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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