Plant phylogeny drives arboreal caterpillar assemblages across the Holarctic.

ABSTRACT: Assemblages of insect herbivores are structured by plant traits such as nutrient content, secondary metabolites, physical traits, and phenology. Many of these traits are phylogenetically conserved, implying a decrease in trait similarity with increasing phylogenetic distance of the host plant taxa. Thus, a metric of phylogenetic distances and relationships can be considered a proxy for phylogenetically conserved plant traits and used to predict variation in herbivorous insect assemblages among co-occurring plant species.Using a Holarctic dataset of exposed-feeding and shelter-building caterpillars, we aimed at showing how phylogenetic relationships among host plants explain compositional changes and characteristics of herbivore assemblages.Our plant-caterpillar network data derived from pl

SUBMITTER: Seifert CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7771119 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature