Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
1,187
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.7.1
Dataset results
1,187 results for “herbivores”
Environmental context shapes the relationship between grass consumption and body size in African herbivore communities
<p>Though herbivore grass dependence has been shown to increase with body size across herbivore species, it is unclear whether this relationship holds at the community level. Here we evaluate whether grass consumption scales positively with body size within African large mammalian herbivore communities and how this relationship varies with environmental context. We used stable carbon isotope and community occurrence data to investigate how grass dependence scales with body size within 23 savanna herbivore communities throughout eastern and central Africa. We found that dietary grass fraction increased with body size for the majority of herbivore communities considered, especially when complete community data were available. However, the slope of this relationship varied, and rainfall seasonality and elephant presence were key drivers of the variation—grass dependence increased less strongly with body size where rainfall was more seasonal and where elephants were present. We found also that the dependence of the herbivore community as a whole on grass peaked at intermediate woody cover. Intraspecific diet variation contributed to these community-level patterns: common hippopotamus (<em>Hippopotamus amphibius</em>) and giraffe (<em>Giraffa camelopardalis</em>) ate less grass where rainfall was more seasonal, whereas Cape buffalo (<em>Syncerus caffer</em>) and savanna elephant (<em>Loxodonta africana</em>)<strong> </strong>grass consumption were parabolically related to woody cover. Our results indicate that general rules appear to govern herbivore community assembly, though some aspects of herbivore foraging behavior depend upon local environmental context.</p>
Data from: The impact of plant genetic variation, drought, and leaf nitrogen on plant-herbivore interactions
<p>Plant genotype, drought stress, and their interaction are among the factors contributing to the susceptibility of plants to herbivory. The plant's nitrogen concentration, a critical and often limiting nutrient, differs with plant genotype and drought. Still, few studies have investigated the impact of the interaction of genotype and drought on herbivory and plant nitrogen. We established a common garden in Duluth, MN, of tall goldenrod, <em>Solidago altissima,</em> collected from a local Minnesota site to analyze the effects of goldenrod genotype and drought stress on leaf nitrogen and the preference and performance of the chrysanthemum lace bug, <em>Corythucha marmorata</em>. Lace bugs had oviposition, nymph, and adult preferences among host plant genotypes, water treatments, and among genotype and water treatment combinations. Nymph and adult survival and adult mass varied significantly due to plant genotype, water treatment, the interaction of plant and water treatment, and the interaction of treatment with lace bug density. Oviposition preference and offspring performance were significantly positively related. Leaf nitrogen increased with the increasing severity of the water limitation in the absence of lace bugs. However, in the presence of lace bugs, there was no difference in nitrogen among water treatments.</p>
Small-scale fires interact with herbivore feedbacks to create persistent grazing lawn environments
<p>Fire-herbivory feedbacks strongly influence the formation of grazing lawns in savanna ecosystems. Preliminary findings suggest that small-scale (< 25 ha) fires can engineer grazing lawns by concentrating herbivores on the post-burn green flush; however, the persistence of such grazing lawns over the longer term and without repeated fire is unknown.</p> <p>We used high-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to investigate the long-term effects of fire manipulation on short grass structure (height, cover, volume, and spatial continuity) and grazing lawn establishment in Kruger National Park, South Africa. We analysed the effects of fire exclusion and experimental burns applied over a 7-year period (2013-2019) followed by a one-year cessation of burning at varying spatial scales during the early and late dry seasons.</p> <p>Fires contributed a fourfold increase in short grass cover, regardless of fire season or size. The distribution of grass height differed significantly between fire-induced grazing lawns and recently unburnt parts of the landscape where controlled fires were excluded over the experimental period. The volume (corresponding to bulk density) of short grass on the landscape responded strongly to fires, with grass volume <20 cm in height increasing with both early and late dry season fires.</p> <p>Early dry season fires caused larger and more homogeneous short grass patches. Furthermore, early dry season fires were more influential in increasing the cover of the shortest grass height class (1-5 cm).</p> <p><em>Synthesis and applications</em>. Our results demonstrate that fire-induced grazing lawns can persist over the longer-term, even when fires are no longer applied, leading to the creation of vertical and horizontal heterogeneity in the grass layer. Small-scale fires, therefore, represent a feasible management approach to expanding grazing lawn extent, potentially benefiting grazer coexistence and diversity.</p>
Can livestock grazing dampen density dependent fluctuations in wild herbivore populations?
<p>Conservation policy for the high mountains of Asia increasingly recognises the need to encompass large multi-use landscapes beyond the protected area network. Due to limited long-term research in this region, our understanding of even fundamental processes, such as factors regulating large mammal populations is poor.</p> <p>Understanding the factors that regulate animal populations, especially those generating cyclicity, is a long-standing problem in ecology. Long-term research across multiple taxa (mainly from Europe and North America) has focused on the relative roles of food and predation in generating cyclicity in population dynamics. It remains unclear how trophic interactions that are influenced by anthropogenic stressors can affect population dynamics in human-modified landscapes. </p> <p>We present a 10-year study to compare the effects of livestock grazing on density dependent dynamics in two populations of bharal, <em>Pseudois nayaur</em>, in the Himalaya. We combine this with a mechanistic understanding of whether density dependence in these two sites acts predominantly by affecting adult survival or recruitment. We compared and quantified density dependence in the bharal population by fitting Bayesian Gompertz state‐space (GSS) models.</p> <p>We found evidence for negative density dependence which indicates possible cyclic dynamics in the bharal population of the site (Tabo) with low livestock density. The population dynamics of this site were driven by recruited offspring – with a 2-year density dependent lag effect – rather than adult survival. In the site with high livestock density (Kibber), this density dependence was not detected. We postulate the potential role of excessive grazing by livestock in affecting offspring recruitment, thereby affecting the bharal population in Kibber.</p> <p><em>Synthesis and applications</em>: Our results suggest that conservation action to facilitate wild herbivore population recovery, such as the development of protected areas and village reserves, needs to account for density dependent regulation. Sites with trophy hunting require continuous monitoring to understand the effects of density dependence so that appropriate hunting quotas can be formulated.</p>
Metagenomic analysis of gut microbiome illuminates the mechanisms and evolution of lignocellulose degradation in mangrove herbivorous crabs
<p><strong>Background:</strong></p> <p>Sesarmid crabs dominate mangrove habitat as the major primary consumers, which facilitates the trophic link and nutrient recycling in the ecosystem. Therefore, the adaptations and mechanisms of sesarmid crabs to herbivory is not only crucial to terrestrialization and its evolutionary success, but also to the healthy functioning of mangrove forest ecosystems. Although endogenous cellulases expressions were reported in crab species, it remains unknown if the endogenous enzymes alone can complete the whole lignocellulolytic pathway, or they also depend on the contribution from their intestinal microbiome. We attempt to investigate the role of gut symbiotic microbes of mangrove-feeding sesarmid crabs in plant digestion using a comparative metagenomic approach.</p> <p><strong>Results:</strong></p> <p>Metagenomics analyses on 43 crab gut samples from 23 species of mangrove crabs revealed a wide coverage of 127 CAZy families and nine KOs targeting lignocellulose and their derivatives in all species analyzed, including predominantly carnivorous species, suggesting the crab species gut microbiome have lignocellulolytic capacity regardless of dietary preference. Microbial cellulase, hemicellulase and pectinase genes in herbivorous and detritivorous crabs were differentially more abundant when compared to omnivorous and carnivorous crabs, indicating the importance of gut symbionts in lignocellulose degradation in mangrove crabs and the enrichment of lignocellulolytic microbes in response to diet with higher lignocellulose content. The herbivorous and detritivorous crabs showed highly similar CAZyme composition compared to dissimilarities observed in taxonomic profiles observed in both groups, suggesting a stronger selection force to gut microbiota by its functional capacity than by taxonomy. The gut microbiota in herbivorous sesarmid crabs were also enriched with nitrogen reduction and fixation genes, implying possible roles of the gut microbiota in supplementing nitrogen that is deficient in plant diet.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions:</strong></p> <p>Endosymbiotic cellulolytic microbes play an important role in lignocellulose degradation in most crab species but their abundance is strongly correlated with dietary preference, and they are highly enriched in herbivorous sesarmids, thus enhancing their capacity for digestion of mangrove leaves. Dietary preference is a stronger driver in determining the microbial CAZyme composition and taxonomic profile in mangrove crab microbiome, resulting in functional redundancy of endosymbiotic microbes. Our results showed that crabs implement a mixed mode of digestion utilizing both endogenous and microbial enzymes in lignocellulose degradation, as observed in most of the more advanced herbivorous invertebrate species.</p>
Insect herbivore damages on white spruce growing in plantations and naturally regenerated under-canopy forest stands
<p>This data was prepared to compare insect damage on white spruce (<em>Picea glauca</em> (Moench) Voss, Pinaceae) growing in plantations with naturally regenerated trees under mature forest canopies in the boreal forest (Québec, Canada). We selected ten sites in the naturally regenerated forest and small, multispecies plantations and sampled ten young trees (per site) in late summer 2020 and again in early and late summer 2021. We recorded overall rates of damage for galls, damage by spruce budworm (<em>Choristoneura fumiferana</em> (Clemens, 1865)), spruce bud midge, spruce budmoth, spruce gall midge, cooley adelgid, defoliation from sawflies and other caterpillars.</p>
Root-knot nematode infection of Brassica rapa enhances the performance of a specialist root herbivore via systemically induced responses
<p>Herbivores sharing host plants are often temporally and spatially separated, limiting direct interactions between them. Nevertheless, they can reciprocally influence each other via systemically induced plant responses, as observed in numerous study systems. In contrast, examples of such plant-mediated interactions between belowground herbivores are scarce, but we postulated that they similarly occur given the large diversity of root-interacting soil organisms. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the performance of <em>Delia radicum</em> larvae feeding on main roots of <em>Brassica rapa </em>plants whose fine roots were infected by the root-knot nematode <em>Meloidogyne incognita</em>. Simultaneously, we studied the effects of <em>M. incognita</em> on <em>D. radicum</em>-induced defense responses and the accumulation of primary metabolites in the main root. We observed that almost 1.5 times as many <em>D. radicum</em> adults emerged from nematode-infected plants, indicating a facilitation effect of <em>M. incognita</em> infection.<em> </em>Although we observed increases in the accumulation of proteins and two essential amino-acids, the strongest effect of nematode-infection was visible in the defense response to <em>D. radicum</em>. We observed a 1.5 times higher accumulation of the defense-related phytohormone JA-Ile in response to <em>D. radicum</em> on nematode-infected plants, coinciding with a 75% increase in indole glucosinolate concentrations. Contrastingly, concentrations of aliphatic glucosinolates, secondary metabolites negatively affecting <em>D. radicum</em>, were 10-25% lower in nematode<em>-</em>infected plants. We hypothesize that the attenuated aliphatic glucosinolate concentrations result from antagonistic interactions between biosynthetic pathways of both glucosinolate classes, which was reflected in the expression of key biosynthesis genes. Our results provide explicit evidence of plant-mediated interactions between belowground organisms via systemically induced responses in roots.</p>
Nitrogen fertilization and high plant growing temperature increase herbivore performance
<p>Global environmental change exerts growing pressure on biodiversity. Anthropogenic climate and land use change are particularly important drivers of biodiversity loss. While their effects on biodiversity have been widely studied individually, interactions among them are poorly understood. Here, we investigate the effects of two common drivers of global change, increased temperature and nitrogen fertilization, on host-plant quality and herbivore performance in the butterfly <i>Lycaena tityrus</i>. We show that butterfly performance was positively affected by plants grown at increased temperatures and nitrogen fertilization, the latter being in line with the nitrogen limitation hypothesis. Effects were largely consistent across treatments, i.e. nitrogen deposition and temperature did not interact strongly to affect herbivore performance. Overall, females suffered more strongly than males from poor host-plant quality. Our study demonstrates changes in host-plant quality caused by variation in temperature and nitrogen availability, which induced indirect effects in an herbivore. Such indirect effects of global environmental change are an important source of variation and should be considered in order to reduce uncertainties with regard to the effects of global change on biodiversity.</p>
Elevated atmospheric CO2 changes defence allocation in wheat but herbivore resistance persists
<p>Predicting how plants allocate to different anti-herbivore defences in response to elevated carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) concentrations is important for understanding future patterns of crop susceptibility to herbivory. Theories of defence allocation, especially in the context of environmental change, largely overlook the role of silicon (Si), despite it being the major anti-herbivore defence in the Poaceae. We demonstrated that elevated levels of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> (e[CO<sub>2</sub>]) promoted plant growth by 33% and caused wheat (<i>Triticum aestivum</i>) to switch from Si (–19%) to phenolic (+44%) defences. Despite the lower levels of Si under e[CO<sub>2</sub>], resistance to the global pest <i>Helicoverpa armigera</i> persisted; relative growth rates (RGR) were reduced by at least 33% on Si supplied plants, irrespective of CO<sub>2</sub> levels. RGR was negatively correlated with leaf Si concentrations. Mandible wear was c. 30% higher when feeding on Si supplemented plants compared to those feeding on plants with no Si supply. We conclude that higher carbon availability under e[CO<sub>2</sub>] reduces silicification and causes wheat to increase concentrations of phenolics. However, Si supply, at all levels, suppressed the growth of <i>H. armigera</i> under both CO<sub>2</sub> regimes, suggesting that shifts in defence allocation under future climate change may not compromise herbivore resistance in wheat.</p>
Ecological consequences of large herbivore exclusion in an African savanna: 12 years of data from the UHURU experiment
<p>Diverse communities of large mammalian herbivores (LMH), once widespread, are now rare. LMH exert strong direct and indirect effects on community structure and ecosystem functions, and measuring these effects is important for testing ecological theory and for understanding past, current, and future environmental change. This in turn requires long-term experimental manipulations, owing to the slow and often nonlinear responses of populations and assemblages to LMH removal. Moreover, the effects of particular species or body-size classes within diverse LMH guilds are difficult to pinpoint, and the magnitude and even direction of these effects often depends on environmental context. Since 2008, we have maintained the Ungulate Herbivory Under Rainfall Uncertainty (UHURU) experiment, a series of size-selective LMH exclosures replicated across a rainfall/productivity gradient in a semi-arid Kenyan savanna. The goals of the UHURU experiment are to measure the effects of removing successively smaller size classes of LMH (mimicking the process of size-biased extirpation) and to establish how these effects are shaped by spatial and temporal variation in rainfall. The UHURU experiment comprises three LMH-exclusion treatments and an unfenced control, applied to 9 randomized blocks of contiguous 1-ha plots (n = 36). The fenced treatments are: "MEGA" (exclusion of megaherbivores, elephant and giraffe); "MESO" (exclusion of herbivores ≥40 kg); and "TOTAL" (exclusion of herbivores ≥5 kg). Each block is replicated three times at three sites across the 20-km rainfall gradient, which has fluctuated over the course of the experiment. The first five years of data were published previously (Ecological Archives E095-064) and have been used in numerous studies. Since that publication, we have (a) continued to collect data following the original protocols, (b) improved the taxonomic resolution and accuracy of plant and small-mammal identifications, and (c) begun collecting several new data sets. Here, we present updated and extended raw data from the first 12 years of the UHURU experiment (2008–2019). Data include daily rainfall data throughout the experiment; annual surveys of understory plant communities; annual censuses of woody-plant communities; annual measurements of individually tagged woody plants; monthly monitoring of flowering and fruiting phenology; every-other-month small-mammal mark-recapture data; and quarterly large-mammal dung surveys.</p>
Timing of a plant–herbivore interaction alters plant growth and reproduction
<p>Phenological shifts in timing of species interactions have the potential to change size-structured species interactions, but relatively few studies have used experimental manipulations to examine the season-long effects of phenological mismatches in multiple development contexts. While previous experimental studies have examined how phenological mismatches in plant-herbivore interactions can affect both plants and their herbivores, less is known about their effects on subsequent plant-pollinator interactions. Here, we conducted an experiment to determine how shifts in the phenological timing of monarch (<i>Danaus plexippus</i>) larval herbivory affected milkweed (<i>Asclepias fascicularis</i>) host plant performance, including effects on growth and subsequent effects on flower and seed pod phenology and production. We found that variation in the timing of herbivory affected both plant growth and reproduction, with measurable effects several weeks to months after herbivory ended. The timing of herbivory had qualitatively different effects on vegetative and reproductive biomass: early-season herbivory had the strongest effects on plant size, while late-season herbivory had the strongest effects on the production of viable seeds. These results show that phenological shifts in herbivory can have persistent and qualitatively different effects on different life stages across the season.</p>
Data for "Meta-analysis of induced anti-herbivore defence traits in plants from 647 manipulative experiments with natural and simulated herbivory"
<p>Data used in analysis in "Meta-analysis of induced anti-herbivore defence traits in plants from 647 manipulative experiments with natural and simulated herbivory" in Journal of Ecology. </p> <p>Code used for analysis are included as Supplementary Material of the main article. </p> <p> </p>
Data from: Foliar herbivory creates subtle soil legacy effects that alter future herbivores via changes in plant community biomass allocation
<p>Plants leave legacy effects in the soil they grow in, which can drive important vegetation processes, including productivity, community dynamics and species turnover. Plants at the same time also face continuous pressure posed by insect herbivores. Given the intimate interactions between plants and herbivores in ecosystems, plant identity and herbivory are likely to interactively shape soil legacies. However, the mechanisms that drive such legacy effects on future generations of plants and associated herbivores are little known.<br> In a greenhouse study, we exposed ten common grasses and non-leguminous forbs individually to insect herbivory by two closely related noctuid caterpillars, <i>Mamestra brassicae</i> and <i>Trichoplusia ni</i> (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) or kept them free of herbivores. We then used the soil legacies created by these plant individuals to grow a plant community composed of all ten plant species in each soil, and exposed these plant communities to <i>M. brassicae</i>. We measured conditioning plant biomass, soil respiration and chemistry of the conditioned soils, as well as individual plant, plant community and herbivore biomass responses.</p> <p>At the end of the conditioning phase, soils with herbivore legacies had higher soil respiration, but only significantly so for <i>M. brassicae</i>. Herbivore legacies had minimal impacts on community productivity. However, path models reveal that herbivore-induced soil legacies affected responding herbivores through changes in plant community shoot: root ratios. Soil legacy effect patterns differed between functional groups. We found strong plant species and functional group-specific effects on soil respiration parameters, which in turn led to plant community shifts in grass: forb biomass ratios. Soil legacies were negative for the growth of plants of the same functional group. </p> <p><strong>Synthesis:</strong><i> </i>We show that insect herbivory, plant species and their functional groups, all incur soil microbial responses that lead to subtle (herbivory) or strong (plants and their functional group) effects in response plant communities and associated polyphagous herbivores. Hence, even though typically ignored, our study emphasizes that legacies of previous insect herbivory in the soil can influence current soil-plant-insect community interactions.</p>
Exotic herbivores dominate Australian high‐elevation grasslands
<p>Invasive species are major drivers of ecosystem degradation globally. How invasive herbivore impacts differ from native herbivore impacts remains understudied. We examined the relationships between herbivore sign and vegetation height, foliage density, cover of forbs, weeds, bare ground, and soil compaction across environmental and herbivore activity gradients in the mainland Australian Alps. We detected native and exotic herbivore sign at 32.8% and 94.0% of sites, respectively. Total herbivore activity was primarily attributed to exotic herbivores and was associated with elevation and grassland type. Greater horse (exotic) activity was associated with lower vegetation height, lower foliage density, higher forb cover, and higher soil compaction. Greater rabbit and hare (exotic) activity was associated with lower vegetation height, lower foliage density, and a higher cover of bare ground. Greater total herbivore activity was associated with greater weed cover. Neither deer (exotic) nor kangaroo and wallaby (native) activity was related to response variables. We demonstrate that exotic herbivores dominate mammalian herbivory in these grasslands, which evolved without analogous hooved species. Given the restricted distribution and high endemism of these ecosystems, and associations between exotic herbivores and characteristics of degraded grasslands, we recommend landscape-scale exotic herbivore management, focusing on maintaining ground cover and vegetation structure.</p>
Data from: Large herbivores trigger spatiotemporal changes in forest plant diversity
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Large herbivores can exert top-down control on terrestrial plant communities, but the magnitude, direction, and scale-dependency of their impacts remain equivocal, especially in temperate and boreal forests, where multiple disturbances often interact. Using a unique, long-term and replicated landscape experiment, we assessed the influence of a high density of white-tailed deer (</span><em><span>Odocoileus virginianus</span></em><span>) on the spatiotemporal dynamics of diversity, composition, and successional trajectories of understorey plant assemblages in recently logged boreal forests. This experiment provided a rare opportunity to test </span><span>whether deer herbivory represents a direct filter on plant communities or if it mainly acts to suppress dominant plants which, in turn, release other plant species from strong negative plant-plant interactions. These two hypotheses make different predictions about changes in community composition, alpha and beta diversity in different</span><span> vegetation layers and at different spatial scales. Our results showed that deer had strong effects on plant community composition and successional trajectories, but the resulting impacts on plant alpha and beta diversity patterns were markedly scale-dependent in both time and space. Responses of tree and non-tree vegetation layers were strongly asymmetric. Deer acted both as a direct filter and as a suppressor of dominant plant species during early forest succession, but the magnitude of both processes was specific to tree and non-tree vegetation layers. Although our data supported the </span><span>ungulate-driven </span><span>homogenization hypothesis, </span><span>compositional shifts and changes of alpha diversity were poor predictors of beta diversity loss.</span><span> Our findings underscore the importance of long-term studies in revealing non-linear temporal community trends, and they challenge managers to prioritize particular community properties and scales of interest, given contrasting trends of composition, alpha, and beta diversity across spatial scales.</span></p>
Mutualism has its limits: consequences of asymmetric interactions between a well-defended plant and its herbivorous pollinator
<p>Concern for pollinator health has focused on social bees and their agricultural services, but not all pollinators are bees, and their ecosystem services also promote biodiversity and conservation. Pollinating herbivores generate ecological conflicts when they utilize the same plant as a nectar source and larval host. We tracked individual-level metrics of pollinator health – growth, survivorship, fecundity – across the life cycle of a pollinating herbivore, the hawkmoth Hyles lineata, through its interactions with Oenothera harringtonii, a rare plant polymorphic for the floral volatile (R)-(-)-linalool. Linalool had no impact on moth attraction to O. harringtonii flowers but suppressed oviposition on experimentally supplemented plants. Leaves of O. harringtonii showed robust resistance against herbivory by H. lineata from leaf-disc to wholeplant scales, through poor larval growth and survivorship. Higher larval performance on other Oenothera species indicates that constitutive herbivore resistance by O. harringtonii is not generic. Leaf volatiles differed among populations of O. harringtonii but were not induced by larval herbivory. Elagitannins and other phenolics varied among leaf, bud and seed tissues but showed no evidence of herbivore induction. Our findings highlight asymmetric plant-pollinator interactions and the importance of third parties, such as alternative host plants, in maintaining pollinator health.</p>
Fig. 2 in A Pasture Of Big Ungulate Animals As Key Ecological Factor Influencing On The Fluctuation Of Natural Habitat Of Steppe Herbivorous Mammals
Fig. 2. The steppe marmot quantity dynamics in the 20–21th century (cattle vs the steppe marmot).
Phenotypic and genotypic divergence of plant-herbivore interactions along an urbanization gradient
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Urban environments provide challenging conditions for species survival, including increased temperatures, drought, and pollution. Species can deal with these conditions through evolution across generations or the immediate expression of phenotypic plasticity. The resulting phenotypic changes are key to the performance of species and their interactions with other species in the community. We here document patterns of herbivory in <em>Arabidopsis thaliana</em> along a rural-urban gradient, and tested the genetic background and ecological consequences of traits related to herbivore resistance. Aphid densities increased with urbanization levels along the gradient while plant size did not change. Offspring of urban mothers, raised under common garden conditions, were larger and had a decreased trichome density and seed set but a higher caterpillar (<em>Pieris brassicae</em>) tolerance. In contrast, no urban evolution was detected for defenses against aphids (<em>Myzus persicae</em>). Aphids reduced seed set more strongly in urban offspring, but this effect disappeared in second-generation plants. In general, urban adaptations as expressed in size and caterpillar tolerance were found, but these adaptations were associated with smaller inflorescences. The maternal effect on the response of seed set to aphid feeding demonstrates the relevance of intergenerational plasticity as a direct ecological consequence of herbivory. Our study demonstrates that the urban environment interacts with the plant's genotype and the extended phenotype as determined by ecological interactions.</span></p>
Intraspecific variation in plant economic traits predicts trembling aspen resistance to a generalist insect herbivore
<p>Patterns of trait expression within some plant species have recently been shown to follow patterns described by the leaf economics spectrum paradigm. Resistance to herbivores is also expected to covary with leaf economics traits. We selected multiple mature <em>Populus tremuloides</em> genotypes from a common garden to assess whether aspen leaf economics patterns follow those observed among species globally. We also evaluated leaf economics strategies in the context of insect resistance by conducting bioassays to determine the effects of plant traits on preference and performance of <em>Lymantria dispar. </em>We found that: 1) intraspecific trait patterns of <em>P. tremuloides</em> parallel those exhibited by the interspecific leaf economics spectrum, 2) herbivores preferred leaves from genotypes with resource-acquisitive strategies, and 3) herbivores also performed best on genotypes<em> </em>with resource-acquisitive strategies. We conclude that a leaf economics spectrum that incorporates defense traits is a useful tool for explaining intraspecific patterns of variation in plant strategies, including resistance to herbivores.</p>
Agroecological farming, flowering phenology and the pollinator-herbivore-parasitoid nexus regulate non-crop plant reproduction
<p>Agroecological farming uses crop and non-crop plant biodiversity to promote beneficial insects supplying pollination and biocontrol services to crops. Non-crop plants (sown or weeds) are integral to supporting these beneficial insect species interactions. How the uplift of biotic complexity by agroecological management (crop diversification, ecological infrastructure) influences mutualistic and antagonistic insect interactions regulating the reproduction of non-crop plants remains less understood. </p> <p>Using a pesticide-free farm-scale (125 ha) agroecological experiment, we tested how the individual reproduction of pollinator-dependent, non-crop plant species with different flowering phenology (<em>Cyanus segetum, Centaurea jacea</em>) and their mutualistic (pollinator) and antagonistic (seed herbivore–parasitoid) insect interactions were affected by agroecological practices. </p> <p>Seed set and species interactions of replicate <em>C. segetum</em> and <em>C. jacea</em> randomly introduced to field margins was correlated with floral resource heterogeneity at focal plant (e.g., flower display size), local community (floral richness/abundance driven by sown wildflower or grass margins), and local landscape (crop diversification, area of semi-natural habitat or mass flowering crops) scales. </p> <p>At the seasonal peak of non-crop floral diversity and abundance, antagonistic interactions weakly regulated <em>C. segetum</em> seed set with gains from pollinator activity predominating. Conversely, <em>C. jacea</em>, which flowered past the peak of non-crop floral diversity/abundance benefited from the promotion of seed herbivore parasitism and pollinator activity by the local landscape cover of semi-natural habitat and mass flowering crops.</p> <p>Synthesis and applications. Agroecological management produced spatial and-temporal gradients in crop and non-crop floral resources that interacted to modify pollinator or seed herbivore-parasitoid interactions and seed set of <em>Cyanus segetum</em> and <em>Centaurea jacea</em> plants. The degree of phenological overlap between <em>C. segetum</em> and <em>C. jacea</em> flowering and floral resources in the local community or landscape dictated the type and level of exposure to insect interactions influencing reproduction. Design of agroecological practices to deliver pollination and biocontrol services must consider how effects will vary with species traits and the ensemble of mutualistic (pollination) and antagonistic (herbivory, parasitism) interactions governing non-crop plant reproduction. Agroecological management supporting beneficial insect interactions may feedback to help restore functional non-crop plant populations and associated biodiversity, potentially reducing the frequency of management interventions (e.g., re-sowing wildflower strips). </p>
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.