Multiple components of plant diversity loss determine herbivore phylogenetic diversity in a subtropical forest experiment
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Multiple components of plant diversity loss determine herbivore phylogenetic diversity in a subtropical forest experiment. / Wang, Ming-Qiang; Li, Yi; Chesters, Douglas et al.
In: Journal of Ecology, Vol. 107, No. 6, 01.11.2019, p. 2697-2712.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiple components of plant diversity loss determine herbivore phylogenetic diversity in a subtropical forest experiment
AU - Wang, Ming-Qiang
AU - Li, Yi
AU - Chesters, Douglas
AU - Anttonen, Perttu
AU - Bruelheide, Helge
AU - Chen, Jing-Ting
AU - Durka, Walter
AU - Guo, Peng-Fei
AU - Haerdtle, Werner
AU - Ma, Keping
AU - Michalski, Stefan G.
AU - Schmid, Bernhard
AU - von Oheimb, Goddert
AU - Wu, Chun-Sheng
AU - Zhang, Nai-Li
AU - Zhou, Qing-Song
AU - Schuldt, Andreas
AU - Zhu, Chao-Dong
N1 - Funding Information: We are grateful to the BEF‐China consortium for support (especially, Bo Yang, Shan Li and Xiao‐Juan Liu). We thank Ren‐Jie Zhang and several local assistants for their helps in the sampling. The authors particularly thank Maria Heikkilä (Finnish Museum of Natural History, Zoology Unit, University of Helsinki) for providing a nexus file of the backbone tree. We are grateful to Wenzel Kröber for the assessment of tree traits. This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Science (XDB310304) and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (31625024). We acknowledge funding of the BEF‐China experiment by the German Research Foundation (DFG FOR 891‐3 and 319936945/GRK2324). Ming‐Qiang Wang was supported by the UCAS Joint Ph.D. program (UCAS [2017‐26]) to study for 1 year at Andreas Schuldt's Lab, Georg‐August‐University of Göttingen. H.B. acknowledges the support of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig. B.S. was supported by the University Research Priority Program ‘Global Change and Biodiversity’ of the University of Zurich. D.C. was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (31772495). Publisher Copyright: © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - Plant diversity loss can alter higher trophic‐level communities via non‐random species interactions, which in turn may cascade to affect key ecosystem functions. These non‐random linkages might be best captured by patterns of phylogenetic diversity, which take into account co‐evolutionary dependencies. However, lack of adequate phylogenetic data of higher trophic levels hampers our mechanistic understanding of biodiversity relationships in species‐rich ecosystems. We used DNA barcoding to generate data on the phylogenetic diversity of lepidopteran caterpillars in a large‐scale forest biodiversity experiment in subtropical China. We analysed how different metrics of lepidopteran phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD, MPD, MNTD) and taxonomic diversity were influenced by multiple components of tree diversity (taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic). Our data from six sampling periods represent 7,204 mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences of lepidopteran larvae, clustered into 461 molecular operational taxonomic units. Lepidopteran abundance, the effective number of species (irrespective of the focus on rare or common species) and Faith's PD and MPD (reflecting basal evolutionary splits), but not MNTD (reflecting recent evolutionary splits), significantly increased with experimentally manipulated tree species richness. Lepidopteran MNTD decreased with increasing tree MNTD. Path analyses showed that tree phylogenetic and functional diversity explained part, but not all of the effects of tree species richness on lepidopteran diversity. Importantly, tree diversity effects on lepidopteran diversity were to a large extent indirect, operating via changes in lepidopteran abundance. Synthesis. Our study shows that evolutionary dependencies determine the response of herbivore communities to changes in host plant diversity. Incorporating a wider range of diversity metrics both at the level of producers and consumers can thus help to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the functional consequences of biodiversity change across trophic levels. Moreover, the dependence of trophic linkages on herbivore abundances underlines the need to address the consequences of current declines in insect abundances for ecosystem structure and functioning.
AB - Plant diversity loss can alter higher trophic‐level communities via non‐random species interactions, which in turn may cascade to affect key ecosystem functions. These non‐random linkages might be best captured by patterns of phylogenetic diversity, which take into account co‐evolutionary dependencies. However, lack of adequate phylogenetic data of higher trophic levels hampers our mechanistic understanding of biodiversity relationships in species‐rich ecosystems. We used DNA barcoding to generate data on the phylogenetic diversity of lepidopteran caterpillars in a large‐scale forest biodiversity experiment in subtropical China. We analysed how different metrics of lepidopteran phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD, MPD, MNTD) and taxonomic diversity were influenced by multiple components of tree diversity (taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic). Our data from six sampling periods represent 7,204 mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences of lepidopteran larvae, clustered into 461 molecular operational taxonomic units. Lepidopteran abundance, the effective number of species (irrespective of the focus on rare or common species) and Faith's PD and MPD (reflecting basal evolutionary splits), but not MNTD (reflecting recent evolutionary splits), significantly increased with experimentally manipulated tree species richness. Lepidopteran MNTD decreased with increasing tree MNTD. Path analyses showed that tree phylogenetic and functional diversity explained part, but not all of the effects of tree species richness on lepidopteran diversity. Importantly, tree diversity effects on lepidopteran diversity were to a large extent indirect, operating via changes in lepidopteran abundance. Synthesis. Our study shows that evolutionary dependencies determine the response of herbivore communities to changes in host plant diversity. Incorporating a wider range of diversity metrics both at the level of producers and consumers can thus help to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the functional consequences of biodiversity change across trophic levels. Moreover, the dependence of trophic linkages on herbivore abundances underlines the need to address the consequences of current declines in insect abundances for ecosystem structure and functioning.
KW - BEF-China
KW - biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
KW - Hill numbers
KW - Lepidoptera
KW - phylogenetic diversity
KW - plant species richness
KW - Ecosystems Research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073613889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1365-2745.13273
DO - 10.1111/1365-2745.13273
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 107
SP - 2697
EP - 2712
JO - Journal of Ecology
JF - Journal of Ecology
SN - 0022-0477
IS - 6
ER -