Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California, 95616, USA.
Ecology. 2017 Aug;98(8):1996-2002. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1925.
Many plants respond to herbivory by increasing expression of defensive traits. The defensive response of plants can vary depending on plant condition, seasonality, and time of day. Due to a lack of field-based studies, it is unclear how temporal variability in defensive response may alter future rates of herbivory within ecological communities. In a series of simulated herbivory experiments, I quantified how the timing of leaf damage in mountain sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana) affects future herbivory. An identical leaf damage treatment was applied across 12 time windows to test how the effectiveness of response to herbivore damage changes along three interacting temporal scales: diel, seasonal, and annual. In contrast to several studies demonstrating induced resistance to herbivory in sagebrush, prevention of future herbivory was only detected following summer afternoon leaf damage in one of three years. These findings suggest that the timing of experimental leaf damage is one of many factors contributing to variability in field-based plant defensive induction studies.
许多植物通过增加防御特征的表达来对草食性做出反应。植物的防御反应可能因植物状况、季节性和一天中的时间而异。由于缺乏实地研究，目前尚不清楚防御反应的时间可变性如何改变生态群落中未来的草食率。在一系列模拟草食性的实验中，我量化了山艾树（Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana）叶片损伤的时间如何影响未来的草食性。在 12 个时间窗口中应用相同的叶片损伤处理，以测试对草食性损伤的反应有效性如何沿三个相互作用的时间尺度（日、季节和年）发生变化。与几项表明在山艾树中对草食性具有诱导抗性的研究相反，在三年中的一年中，仅在夏季下午叶片损伤后才检测到对未来草食性的预防。这些发现表明，实验叶片损伤的时间是导致基于现场的植物防御诱导研究中变异性的众多因素之一。
