Leaf defense syndromes in tropical ferns
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Leaf defense syndromes in tropical ferns Rafael de Paiva Farias . Lucas Erickson Nascimento da Costa . Antoˆnio Fernando Morais de Oliveira . Iva Carneiro Lea˜o Barros . Klaus Mehltreter
Received: 3 July 2019 / Accepted: 23 October 2019 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Vascular plants exhibit defense syndromes, a variety of interdependent defensive traits against herbivores, which may considerably differ between plant groups. Although ferns are an abundant component of tropical forest understories, studies of fern–herbivore interactions are scarce, and none has focused on the underlying defense syndromes. To examine the potential defense syndromes of 34 species of tropical ferns of Brazilian forests, we measured ten leaf traits and examined their correlation with parallelly assessed leaf damages. The first three components of categorical PCA were related (1) with SLA, water content, nitrogen, and phosphorus (33.2% of variance); (2) with tannins and saponins, but negatively with trichome density (22.5%); and (3) with
Communicated by Eleonora Egidi. R. de PaivaFarias L. E. N. da Costa A. F. M. de Oliveira I. C. L. Barros Departamento de Botaˆnica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, PE 50560 901, Brazil K. Mehltreter (&) Red de Ecologı´a Funcional, Instituto de Ecologı´a, A.C., carretera antigua a Coatepec No. 351, El Haya, 91070 Xalapa, VER, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] K. Mehltreter ¨ kologie, Institut fu¨r Systematische Botanik und O Universita¨t Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany
phenol concentrations (16.1%). We identified three groups of fern species with similar leaf damages but different defense syndromes: (I) 14 species were of high nutritional quality (= high SLA, N and water content), but a variable trichome density; (II) 4 species were of low nutritional quality, but had high phenol concentrations, and often a high trichome density; and (III) 16 species were of intermediate nutritional quality and had a low trichome density or were glabrous. Most species (groups I and III) including tree ferns used chemical defenses to protect their highly valuable, nutritious leaves. Group II, exemplified by bracken fern, combined however a low nutritional quality with a powerful chemical defense, including high phenol concentrations, and many trichomes. Because leaf damages did not differ significantly among groups, we conclude that each defense syndrome provides species with a similar resistance against their herbivores. Keywords Herbivory Phenols Physical defense Plant–herbivore interactions Plant defense strategy Pteridophytes
Introduction Herbivores represent one of the main forces that exerts selective pressure on plants (Stamp 2003). Nevertheless, herbivores have to face complex plant defense syndromes consisting of a variety of combinations of
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Plant Ecol
defensive features (Futuyma and Agrawal 2009; Rasmann and Agrawal 2009), which may comprise nutritional quality, regrowth capacity (i.e., tolerance), ph
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