Abstract
Plant size is a major predictor of ecological functioning. We tested the hypothesis that feeding damage to plants increases with plant size, as the conspicuousness of large plants makes resource finding and colonisation easier. Further, large plants can be attractive to herbivores, as they offer greater amounts and ranges of resources and niches, but direct evidence from experiments testing size effects on feeding damage and consequently on plant fitness is so far missing. We established a common garden experiment with a plant size gradient (10–130 cm height) using 21 annual Brassicaceae species, and quantified plant size, biomass and number of all aboveground components (flowers, fruits, leaves, stems) and their proportional feeding damage. Plant reproductive fitness was measured using seed number, 1000 seed weight and total seed weight. Feeding damage to the different plant components increased with plant size or component biomass, with mean damage levels being approximately 30 % for flowers, 5 % for fruits and 1 % for leaves and stems. Feeding damage affected plant reproductive fitness depending on feeding damage type, with flower damage having the strongest effect, shown by greatly reduced seed number, 1000 seed weight and total seed weight. Finally, we found an overall negative effect of plant size on 1000 seed weight, but not on seed number and total seed weight. In conclusion, being conspicuous and attractive to herbivores causes greater flower damage leading to higher fitness costs for large plants, which might be partly counterbalanced by benefits such as enhanced competitive/compensatory abilities or more mutualistic pollinator visits.
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks for help in the field go to Susanne Jahn and Brigitte Jünemann, as well as to Christiane Schlinkert, Eugen Schlinkert, Barbara Scheid, Christina Fischer, Verena Rösch, Georg Everwand, Jenny Osterburg, Annabelle Rohlfing, Anna-Katharina Franke, Petra Kubisch, Alexandra Arndt, Carina Burmeister and Felix Steinmeyer. KWS SAAT and the botanical gardens of the universities of Bayreuth and Göttingen provided part of the seeds. We thank Carsten Thies for advice and Kristy Udy for linguistic improvements of the manuscript and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which improved the manuscript. H.S. was supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony.
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Communicated by Andreas Prinzing.
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Schlinkert, H., Westphal, C., Clough, Y. et al. Feeding damage to plants increases with plant size across 21 Brassicaceae species. Oecologia 179, 455–466 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3353-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3353-z