Hawkins Bradford A, Porter Eric E
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Am Nat. 2003 Jan;161(1):40-9. doi: 10.1086/345479. Epub 2002 Dec 11.
It is widely believed that the diversity of plants influences the diversity of animals, and this should be particularly true of herbivores. We examine this supposition at a moderate spatial extent by comparing the richness patterns of the 217 butterfly species resident in California to those of plants, including all 5,902 vascular plant species and the 552 species known to be fed on by caterpillars. We also examine the relationships between plant/butterfly richness and 20 environmental variables. We found that although plant and butterfly diversities are positively correlated, multiple regression, path models, and spatial analysis indicate that once primary productivity (estimated by a water-energy variable, actual evapotranspiration) and topographical variability are incorporated into models, neither measure of plant richness has any relationship with butterfly richness. To examine whether butterflies with the most specialized diets follow the pattern found across all butterflies, we repeated the analyses for 37 species of strict monophages and their food plants and found that plant and butterfly richness were similarly weakly associated after incorporating the environmental variables. We condude that plant diversity does not directly influence butterfly diversity but that both are probably responding to similar environmental factors.
人们普遍认为植物的多样性会影响动物的多样性，对于食草动物来说尤其如此。我们通过比较加利福尼亚州境内217种蝴蝶物种与植物（包括所有5902种维管植物物种以及已知被毛虫取食的552种植物）的丰富度模式，在中等空间尺度上检验了这一假设。我们还研究了植物/蝴蝶丰富度与20个环境变量之间的关系。我们发现，虽然植物和蝴蝶的多样性呈正相关，但多元回归、路径模型和空间分析表明，一旦将初级生产力（由水-能量变量实际蒸散量估算）和地形变异性纳入模型，植物丰富度的任何指标与蝴蝶丰富度均无关联。为了检验食性最专一的蝴蝶是否遵循在所有蝴蝶中发现的模式，我们对37种严格单食性蝴蝶及其食草植物重复了分析，结果发现纳入环境变量后，植物和蝴蝶丰富度同样呈现出微弱的关联。我们得出结论，植物多样性不会直接影响蝴蝶多样性，二者可能都对相似的环境因素做出反应。
