| 1. |
- Bartish, Igor V., et al.
(författare)
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Fewer chromosomes, more co-occurring species within plant lineages : A likely effect of local survival and colonization
- 2023
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Ingår i: American Journal of Botany. - : Wiley. - 0002-9122 .- 1537-2197. ; 110:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Premise:Plant lineages differ markedly in species richness globally, regionally, and locally. Differences in whole-genome characteristics (WGCs) such as monoploid chromosome number, genome size, and ploidy level may explain differences in global species richness through speciation or global extinction. However, it is unknown whether WGCs drive species richness within lineages also in a recent, postglacial regional flora or in local plant communities through local extinction or colonization and regional species turnover.Methods:We tested for relationships between WGCs and richness of angiosperm families across the Netherlands/Germany/Czechia as a region, and within 193,449 local vegetation plots.Results:Families that are species-rich across the region have lower ploidy levels and small monoploid chromosomes numbers or both (interaction terms), but the relationships disappear after accounting for continental and local richness of families. Families that are species-rich within occupied localities have small numbers of polyploidy and monoploid chromosome numbers or both, independent of their own regional richness and the local richness of all other locally co-occurring species in the plots. Relationships between WGCs and family species-richness persisted after accounting for niche characteristics and life histories.Conclusions:Families that have few chromosomes, either monoploid or holoploid, succeed in maintaining many species in local communities and across a continent and, as indirect consequence of both, across a region. We suggest evolutionary mechanisms to explain how small chromosome numbers and ploidy levels might decrease rates of local extinction and increase rates of colonization. The genome of a macroevolutionary lineage may ultimately control whether its species can ecologically coexist.
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| 2. |
- Gossner, Martin M., et al.
(författare)
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Native Fauna on Exotic Trees : Phylogenetic Conservatism and Geographic Contingency in Two Lineages of Phytophages on Two Lineages of Trees
- 2009
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Ingår i: American Naturalist. - : University of Chicago Press. - 0003-0147 .- 1537-5323. ; 173:5, s. 599-614
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The relative roles of evolutionary history and geographical and ecological contingency for community assembly remain unknown. Plant species, for instance, share more phytophages with closer relatives (phylogenetic conservatism), but for exotic plants introduced to another continent, this may be overlaid by geographically contingent evolution or immigration from locally abundant plant species (mass effects). We assessed within local forests to what extent exotic trees (Douglas-fir, red oak) recruit phytophages (Coleoptera, Heteroptera) from more closely or more distantly related native plants. We found that exotics shared more phytophages with natives from the same major plant lineage (angiosperms vs. gymnosperms) than with natives from the other lineage. This was particularly true for Heteroptera, and it emphasizes the role of host specialization in phylogenetic conservatism of host use. However, for Coleoptera on Douglas-fir, mass effects were important: immigration from beech increased with increasing beech abundance. Within a plant phylum, phylogenetic proximity of exotics and natives increased phytophage similarity, primarily in younger Coleoptera clades on angiosperms, emphasizing a role of past codiversification of hosts and phytophages. Overall, phylogenetic conservatism can shape the assembly of local phytophage communities on exotic trees. Whether it outweighs geographic contingency and mass effects depends on the interplay of phylogenetic scale, local abundance of native tree species, and the biology and evolutionary history of the phytophage taxon.
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| 3. |
- Hacala, Axel, et al.
(författare)
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Drivers of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversities in dominant ground-dwelling arthropods of coastal heathlands
- 2021
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Ingår i: Oecologia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0029-8549 .- 1432-1939. ; 197, s. 511-522
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although functional and phylogenetic diversities are increasingly used in ecology for a variety of purposes, their relationship remains unclear, and this relationship likely differs among taxa, yet most recent studies focused on plants. We hypothesize that communities may be diverse in functional traits due to presence of: many phylogenetic lineages, trait divergence within lineages, many species and random functional variation among species, weak filtering of traits in favorable environments, or strong trait divergence in unfavorable environments. We tested these predictions for taxa showing higher (ants), or lower (spiders, ground beetles) degrees of competition and niche construction, both of which might decouple functional traits from phylogenetic position or from the environment. Studying > 11,000 individuals and 216 species from coastal heathlands, we estimated functional as minimum spanning trees using traits related to the morphology, feeding habits and dispersal, respectively. Relationships between functional and phylogenetic diversities were overall positive and strong. In ants, this relationship disappeared after accounting for taxonomic diversities and environments, whereas in beetles and spiders taxonomic diversity is related to functional diversity only via increasing phylogenetic diversity. Environmental constraints reduced functional diversity in ants, but affected functional diversity only indirectly via phylogenetic diversity (ground beetles) and taxonomic and then phylogenetic diversity (spiders and ground beetles). Results are consistent with phylogenetic conservatism in traits in spiders and ground beetles. In ants, in contrast, traits appear more phylogenetically neutral with any new species potentially representing a new trait state, tentatively suggesting that competition or niche construction might decouple phylogenetics from trait diversity.
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| 4. |
- Kattge, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:1, s. 119-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.
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| 5. |
- Molleman, Freerk, et al.
(författare)
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Quantifying the effects of species traits on predation risk in nature : A comparative study of butterfly wing damage
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Animal Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0021-8790 .- 1365-2656. ; 89:3, s. 716-729
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Evading predators is a fundamental aspect of the ecology and evolution of all prey animals. In studying the influence of prey traits on predation risk, previous researchers have shown that crypsis reduces attack rates on resting prey, predation risk increases with increased prey activity, and rapid locomotion reduces attack rates and increases chances of surviving predator attacks. However, evidence for these conclusions is nearly always based on observations of selected species under artificial conditions. In nature, it remains unclear how defensive traits such as crypsis, activity levels and speed influence realized predation risk across species in a community. Whereas direct observations of predator–prey interactions in nature are rare, insight can be gained by quantifying bodily damage caused by failed predator attacks. We quantified how butterfly species traits affect predation risk in nature by determining how defensive traits correlate with wing damage caused by failed predation attempts, thereby providing the first robust multi-species comparative analysis of predator-induced bodily damage in wild animals. For 34 species of fruit-feeding butterflies in an African forest, we recorded wing damage and quantified crypsis, activity levels and flight speed. We then tested for correlations between damage parameters and species traits using comparative methods that account for measurement error. We detected considerable differences in the extent, location and symmetry of wing surface loss among species, with smaller differences between sexes. We found that males (but not females) of species that flew faster had substantially less wing surface loss. However, we found no correlation between cryptic coloration and symmetrical wing surface loss across species. In species in which males appeared to be more active than females, males had a lower proportion of symmetrical wing surface loss than females. Our results provide evidence that activity greatly influences the probability of attacks and that flying rapidly is effective for escaping pursuing predators in the wild, but we did not find evidence that cryptic species are less likely to be attacked while at rest.
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| 6. |
- Prinzing, Andreas, et al.
(författare)
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Perturbed partners: opposite responses of plant and animal mutualist guilds to inundation disturbances
- 2007
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 1600-0706 .- 0030-1299. ; 116:8, s. 1299-1310
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mutualists have been suggested to play an important role in the assembly of many plant and animal communities, but it is not clear how this depends on environmental factors. Do, for instance, natural disturbances increase or decrease the role of mutualism? We focused on entire guilds of mutualists, studying seed-dispersing ants and ant-dispersed plants along gradients of inundation disturbances. We first studied how abundance and richness of the mutualists, relative to non-mutualists, change along 35 small-scale gradients of inundation disturbances. We found that at disturbed sites, mutualistic plant species, those that reproduce by seeds dispersed by ants, increased in abundance and in consequences in richness, relative to other herbaceous plants. In contrast, we found that among the epigeic arthropods the abundance of mutualists declined, even more so than other arthropods. Correspondingly, distributions of plant and animal mutualists became increasingly discordant at disturbed sites: most plant mutualists were spatially separated from most animal mutualists. We finally found that high abundances of plant mutualists did not translate into a high nutrition service rendered to ants: at disturbed sites, many of the plants of ant-dispersed species did not produce seeds, which coincided with a decline in seed dispersal by ants and a changing searching behavior of the ants. Overall, the small-scale natural disturbances we studied were correlated to a major change in the assembly of mutualist guilds. However, the correlation was often opposite between interacting plant and animal mutualist guilds and may thus reduce the potential interaction between them.
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| 7. |
- Valdés-Correcher, Elena, et al.
(författare)
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Herbivory on the pedunculate oak along an urbanization gradient in Europe : Effects of impervious surface, local tree cover, and insect feeding guild
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 12:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urbanization is an important driver of the diversity and abundance of tree-associated insect herbivores, but its consequences for insect herbivory are poorly understood. A likely source of variability among studies is the insufficient consideration of intra-urban variability in forest cover. With the help of citizen scientists, we investigated the independent and interactive effects of local canopy cover and percentage of impervious surface on insect herbivory in the pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) throughout most of its geographic range in Europe. We found that the damage caused by chewing insect herbivores as well as the incidence of leaf-mining and gall-inducing herbivores consistently decreased with increasing impervious surface around focal oaks. Herbivory by chewing herbivores increased with increasing forest cover, regardless of impervious surface. In contrast, an increase in local canopy cover buffered the negative effect of impervious surface on leaf miners and strengthened its effect on gall inducers. These results show that—just like in non-urban areas—plant–herbivore interactions in cities are structured by a complex set of interacting factors. This highlights that local habitat characteristics within cities have the potential to attenuate or modify the effect of impervious surfaces on biotic interactions.
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