Plant apparency drives leaf herbivory in seedling communities across four subtropical forests
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Plant apparency drives leaf herbivory in seedling communities across four subtropical forests Francesco Martini1,2 · S. Tharanga Aluthwattha1,2 · Christos Mammides1 · Mohammed Armani3 · Uromi Manage Goodale1,2 Received: 24 May 2020 / Accepted: 11 November 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Insect herbivory in natural forests is of critical importance in forest regeneration and dynamics. Some hypotheses that have been proposed to explain variation in leaf consumption by herbivores focus on biotic interactions, while others emphasize the role of the abiotic environment. Here, we evaluated the relative importance of both biotic and abiotic factors in explaining leaf damage on seedlings. We measured the percentage of leaf damage in the understory seedling community of four subtropical forests, covering an elevation gradient from 400 to 1850 m asl. We used fine-scale abiotic (elevation, canopy openness, topography, soil fertility) and biotic (seedling height and number of leaves, neighborhood composition) variables to determine both direct and indirect relationships using linear mixed models and structural equation modeling. We also explored the consistency of our results across the four forests. Taller seedlings experienced higher herbivore damage. Herbivory increased at higher elevations and in areas with higher light availability in one forest, but not in the other three. We found no evidence supporting the effects of biotic interactions on herbivory. Our results, at all levels of analysis, are consistent with the plant apparency theory, which posits that more apparent plants suffer greater attack. We did not find support for hypotheses stressing the role of neighborhood composition on herbivory. Similarly, the abiotic environment does not seem to influence herbivory significantly. We argue that plant apparency, rather than other biotic and abiotic factors, may be the most important predictor of leaf damage in the seedling communities of subtropical forests. Keywords Elevational gradient · Resource availability · Seedlings · Soil nutrients · Neighborhood composition Communicated by Douglas A. Frank.
Introduction
We tested five hypotheses related to how herbivory affects plant leaf damage. We used field data surveying leaf damage on seedling from four communities in subtropical China to evaluate the drivers of herbivore damage. By using fine-scale abiotic and biotic variables to model direct and indirect drivers of herbivory, we found that seedling size was consistently the most important predictor of herbivory. Our results provide evidence that plant apparency, rather than other biotic and abiotic factors, may be the single most important predictor of leaf damage at the seedling stage.
Herbivores can influence plant fitness and survival, with cascading effects on the structure and diversity of floral and faunal communities (Fine et al. 2004; Maron and Crone 2006; Massad 2013). Indeed, herbivores consume on average 20% of the annual ne
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