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Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests?
Abstract
Despite recent progress in understanding mechanisms of tree species coexistence in tropical forests, a simple explanation for the even more extensive diversity of insects feeding on these plants has been missing. We compared folivorous insects from temperate and tropical trees to test the hypothesis that herbivore species coexistence in more diverse communities could reflect narrow host specificity relative to less diverse communities. Temperate and tropical tree species of comparable phylogenetic distribution supported similar numbers of folivorous insect species, 29.0 ± 2.2 and 23.5 ± 1.8 per 100 square meters of foliage, respectively. Host specificity did not differ significantly between community samples, indicating that food resources are not more finely partitioned among folivorous insects in tropical than in temperate forests. These findings suggest that the latitudinal gradient in insect species richness could be a direct function of plant diversity, which increased sevenfold from our temperate to tropical study sites.
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Cited by
Wisz, M. S., Pottier, J., Kissling, W. D., Pellissier, L., Lenoir, J., Damgaard, C. F., Dormann, C. F., Forchhammer, M. C., Grytnes, J., Guisan, A., et al. (2013) · Biological Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1469-185x.2012.00235.x · Cited by 1,769
Marine Biodiversity, Biogeography, Deep-Sea Gradients, and Conservation
Costello, M. J., & Chaudhary, C. (2017) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.060 · Cited by 429
Linking plant phenology to conservation biology
Morellato, L. P. C., Alberton, B., Alvarado, S. T., Borges, B., Buisson, E., Camargo, M. G. G., Cancian, L. F., Carstensen, D. W., Escobar, D. F. E., Leite, P. T. P., et al. (2016) · Biological Conservation · doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.12.033 · Cited by 423
Shivaprakash, K. N., Swami, N., Mysorekar, S., Arora, R., Gangadharan, A., Vohra, K., Jadeyegowda, M., & Kiesecker, J. M. (2022) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su14127154 · Cited by 194
Deraison, H., Badenhausser, I., Loeuille, N., Scherber, C., & Gross, N. (2015) · Ecology Letters · doi:10.1111/ele.12529 · Cited by 69
Metadata
- Authors
- Novotny, V., Drozd, P., Miller, S. E., Kulfan, M., Janda, M., Basset, Y., & Weiblen, G. D.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2006-08-25
- Volume
- 313
- Issue
- 5790
- Pages
- 1115-1118
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2050746391
- Cited by
- 589
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 18.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Novotny, V., Drozd, P., Miller, S. E., Kulfan, M., Janda, M., Basset, Y., & Weiblen, G. D. (2006). Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests? Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1129237
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