Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Glob Chang Biol. 2021 Jun;27(11):2315-2327. doi: 10.1111/gcb.15600. Epub 2021 Apr 6.
Species interactions drive ecosystem processes and are a major focus of global change research. Among the most consequential interactions expected to shift with climate change are those between insect herbivores and plants, both of which are highly sensitive to temperature. Insect herbivores and their host plants display varying levels of synchrony that could be disrupted or enhanced by climate change, yet empirical data on changes in synchrony are lacking. Using evidence of herbivory on herbarium specimens collected from the northeastern United States and France from 1900 to 2015, we provide evidence that plant species with temperature-sensitive phenologies experience higher levels of insect damage in warmer years, while less temperature-sensitive, co-occurring species do not. While herbivory might be mediated by interactions between warming and phenology through multiple pathways, we suggest that warming might lengthen growing seasons for phenologically sensitive plant species, exposing their leaves to herbivores for longer periods of time in warm years. We propose that elevated herbivory in warm years may represent a previously underappreciated cost to phenological tracking of climate change over longer timescales.
物种相互作用驱动着生态系统过程，是全球变化研究的主要焦点。在预期随着气候变化而发生变化的最重要的相互作用中，有一种是昆虫食草动物和植物之间的相互作用，它们对温度都非常敏感。昆虫食草动物及其宿主植物表现出不同程度的同步性，这种同步性可能会被气候变化破坏或增强，但关于同步性变化的经验数据却很缺乏。利用从 1900 年到 2015 年在美国东北部和法国采集的植物标本上的取食证据，我们提供的证据表明，对温度敏感的物候植物在温暖年份受到更高水平的昆虫损害，而对温度不敏感的共存物种则不会。虽然食草作用可能通过多种途径受到变暖与物候之间的相互作用的调节，但我们认为，变暖可能会延长对物候敏感的植物物种的生长季节，在温暖年份中，它们的叶子更容易受到食草动物的侵害。我们提出，在温暖年份中，食草作用的增加可能代表了在更长时间尺度上对气候变化进行物候追踪的一个以前被低估的代价。
