Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology
VOLF LAB
What are the patterns of specialization in insect herbivores associated with diverse tree genera?2/9/2024 The majority of multi-cellular terrestrial life is found in tropical forests, and is either invertebrate or a plant: for decades ecologists have sought to understand why. In an age of biodiversity loss this endeavour has become critical to understanding ecosystem functioning and resilience. As a part of a team including Simon Segar and our colleagues working in Papua New Guinea, we studied three feeding guilds of caterpillars to understand the drivers of their diet breadth across four diverse tropical plant genera. We show that the four tree genera (Macaranga, Ficus, Psychotria, and Syzygium) largely harbour unique herbivore fauna, but there are also great differences between the herbivore guilds, and to some extend also between the host genera. For example, we show there was not a single species of miner shared among the four genera. In contrast, the congeneric species on average shared ca 75% of their miner species and more than 90% of their free-living and semi-concealed caterpillars. We demonstrated that different plant genera combine different defensive traits that appear to drive associated insect diversity. For example, the genus Ficus is the most chemically variable and this likely decreases the probability of host sharing among con-generic species in comparison to the more homogenous Macaranga.
Link to the original publication: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1308608/full
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New PublicationsMarinček P., Léveillé-Bourret É. , Heiduk F., Leong J.V , Bailleul S.M., Volf M., . Wagner N.D. (2024) Challenge accepted: Evolutionary lineages versus taxonomic classification of North American shrub willows (Salix). the American Journal of Botany, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16361
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