The modern pattern of insect herbivory predates the advent of angiosperms by 60 My.

ABSTRACT: Modern ecosystems display complex associations of plants-insects that underwent a long evolutionary process since the appearance of mid-Paleozoic vascular plants. Although several major hypotheses explain the evolution of these plant-insect associations, the initial pattern of modern insect herbivory is poorly understood. To understand the antiquity of modern patterns of terrestrial arthropod herbivory, functional feeding group-damage type (FFG-DT) data were used to analyze a 305 My interval from Late Pennsylvanian to present, in which 134 plant assemblages were used to assess turnover (replacement of some species by other species between sites) and nestedness (difference in composition when no species are replaced between sites) in pairwise comparisons of DTs. Results of beta diversity an

SUBMITTER: Xiao L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11892599 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature