Plant diversity has contrasting effects on herbivore and parasitoid abundance in Centaurea jacea flower heads.

ABSTRACT: High biodiversity is known to increase many ecosystem functions, but studies investigating biodiversity effects have more rarely looked at multi-trophic interactions. We studied a tri-trophic system composed of Centaurea jacea (brown knapweed), its flower head-infesting tephritid fruit flies and their hymenopteran parasitoids, in a grassland biodiversity experiment. We aimed to disentangle the importance of direct effects of plant diversity (through changes in apparency and resource availability) from indirect effects (mediated by host plant quality and performance). To do this, we compared insect communities in C. jacea transplants, whose growth was influenced by the surrounding plant communities (and where direct and indirect effects can occur), with potted C. jacea

SUBMITTER: Nitschke N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5696411 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature