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Phytophagous insect fauna tracks host plant responses to exotic grass invasion

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Abstract

The high dependence of herbivorous insects on their host plants implies that plant invaders can affect these insects directly, by not providing a suitable habitat, or indirectly, by altering host plant availability. In this study, we sampled Asteraceae flower heads in cerrado remnants with varying levels of exotic grass invasion to evaluate whether invasive grasses have a direct effect on herbivore richness independent of the current disturbance level and host plant richness. By classifying herbivores according to the degree of host plant specialization, we also investigated whether invasive grasses reduce the uniqueness of the herbivorous assemblages. Herbivorous insect richness showed a unimodal relationship with invasive grass cover that was significantly explained only by way of the variation in host plant richness. The same result was found for polyphagous and oligophagous insects, but monophages showed a significant negative response to the intensity of the grass invasion that was independent of host plant richness. Our findings lend support to the hypothesis that the aggregate effect of invasive plants on herbivores tends to mirror the effects of invasive plants on host plants. In addition, exotic plants affect specialist insects differently from generalist insects; thus exotic plants affect not only the size but also the structural profile of herbivorous insect assemblages.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to various colleagues for their valuable help with field work, and to Marina R. Braun, Valéria C. Maia, Maria V. Urso-Guimarães, Sérgio Vanin, José R. Mermudes, João Semir, Roberto L. Esteves, and Mara Magenta for providing or confirming identification of insects and plants. This study is part of MAN’s PhD thesis presented to the Graduate Program in Ecology at UNICAMP, and was supported by FAPESP Grants # 98/05085-2 to T.M.L. within the BIOTA-FAPESP Program, # 04/15482-1 to T.M.L., # 03/02541-0 and 06/56889-2 to M.A.N., and CNPq Grants # 306049/2004 to T.M.L. and # 303878/2008-8 to P.I.P.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Depto. Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília (UnB), Brasília, DF, CP 04457, CEP 70919-970, Brazil

    Mário Almeida-Neto

  2. Curso de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil

    Mário Almeida-Neto

  3. Depto. Ecologia, Instituto De Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, SP, 05508-900, Brazil

    Paulo I. Prado

  4. Laboratório de Interações Insetos-Plantas, Depto. Biologia Animal, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, 13083-970, Brazil

    Thomas M. Lewinsohn

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  1. Mário Almeida-Neto
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  2. Paulo I. Prado
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  3. Thomas M. Lewinsohn
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Correspondence to Mário Almeida-Neto.

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Communicated by Roland Brandl.

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Online Resource 1:

A table listing the species of flower head-feeding insects recorded in this study and their abundances. (DOC 124 kb)

Online Resource 2:

A list of the functions used in the model selection analyses. (DOC 51 kb)

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Almeida-Neto, M., Prado, P.I. & Lewinsohn, T.M. Phytophagous insect fauna tracks host plant responses to exotic grass invasion. Oecologia 165, 1051–1062 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1783-1

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