From the leaf to the community: Distinct dimensions of phytochemical diversity shape insect-plant interactions within and among individual plants

Autor(es)

Cosmo, Leandro G. ^{[1, 2]} ; Yamaguchi, Lydia F. ^[3] ; Felix, Gabriel M. F. ^[1] ; Kato, Massuo J. ^[3] ; Cogni, Rodrigo ^[4] ; Pareja, Martin ^[5]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Campinas UNICAMP, Inst Biol, Programa Posgrad Ecol, Campinas - Brazil

^[2] Univ Sao Paulo, Biosci Inst, Ecol Grad Sch, BR-05508900 Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[3] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Chem, Dept Fundamental Chem, Sao Paulo, SP - Brazil

^[4] Univ Sao Paulo, Dept Ecol, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[5] Univ Campinas UNICAMP, Inst Biol, Dept Anim Biol, Campinas - Brazil

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY; v. 109, n. 6, p. 2475-2487, JUN 2021.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

Plant secondary chemistry is known to be an important driver of plant-insect community structure across ecological scales. Recently, the concept of phytochemical diversity (PD) has been introduced to help describe variation in plant secondary chemistry and explain how this variation affects community structure. Previous studies show that PD among individuals and species results in phytochemical mosaics, known as the phytochemical landscape. However, plant traits can vary at finer scales, such as within individuals, and even a single host plant may be perceived as an entire phytochemical landscape by an interacting insect. Using the neotropical shrub Piper amalago, we tested and compared how herbivory, caterpillar biodiversity and plant-herbivore network structure are affected by the compositional (number and concentration of compounds) and structural (diversity of distinct chemical structures) dimensions of PD. We analysed variation among individual plants and among-plant height strata within individual plants. This allowed us to decompose PD within and among plant individuals and analyse how variation at both scales affects the plant-herbivore network. We found that both within and among plants greater structural diversity decreased herbivore feeding damage. Furthermore, each dimension of PD has different effects on herbivore biodiversity and network structure depending on the scale of biological organization. Within plants, the compositional dimension, specifically low concentrations of compounds tentatively identified as Piper amides, increased herbivore biodiversity. This dimension also increased the capacity of strata within plants to mediate ecological cascades through direct and indirect effects on herbivore abundance in the plant-herbivore network. In contrast, a greater structural diversity among plants decreased herbivore biodiversity and the capacity of plants to affect all other herbivores and plants directly and indirectly in the network. Synthesis. Based on our results we expand the concept of the phytochemical landscape to multiple scales of biological organization and provide evidence that PD may be maintained by how its multiple dimensions have distinct roles across scales of biological organization. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 13/25991-0 - Ecologia genômica de insetos: adaptações ao clima e evolução de interações ecológicas
• Beneficiário: Rodrigo Cogni
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Jovens Pesquisadores
• Processo FAPESP: 14/50316-7 - Dimensões US-BIOTA São Paulo: diversidade de interações multi-tróficas quimicamente mediadas em gradientes nos trópicos
• Beneficiário: Massuo Jorge Kato
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Programa BIOTA - Temático
• Processo FAPESP: 19/22146-3 - Como diferenças nos tempos de geração influenciam a coevolução em redes ecológicas?
• Beneficiário: Leandro Giacobelli Cosmo
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Doutorado