CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Yunnan, 666303, China.
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China.
Ecology. 2023 May;104(5):e4028. doi: 10.1002/ecy.4028. Epub 2023 Mar 28.
Factors shaping the interspecific variations in herbivory have puzzled ecologists for decades and several hypotheses have been proposed to explain interspecific variation in leaf herbivory. In a tropical rainforest in Yunnan Province, China, we collected 6732 leaves from 129 species with canopy heights ranging from 1.6 to 65.0 m above the ground. We tested the role of canopy height, the diversity, composition and structural heterogeneity of neighbors and leaf traits in shaping the interspecific variations in herbivory. Results show that leaf herbivory decreased with canopy height and specific leaf area (SLA) and increased with leaf size. However, neighboring species' diversity, composition, and structural heterogeneity showed no association with herbivory. Therefore, neither the visual apparency effect nor the associational resistance effect was detected in this hyperdiverse tropical rainforest. These findings highlight the importance of vertical structure in shaping herbivory patterns in natural communities.
几十年来，塑造种间食草性差异的因素一直困扰着生态学家，为此提出了几种假说来解释叶食性在种间的差异。在中国云南省的一个热带雨林中，我们从 129 个物种中收集了 6732 片叶子，这些物种的冠层高度从地面以上 1.6 到 65.0 米不等。我们测试了冠层高度、邻居的多样性、组成和结构异质性以及叶片特性在塑造种间食草性差异中的作用。结果表明，叶食性随冠层高度和比叶面积（SLA）的增加而降低，随叶片大小的增加而增加。然而，相邻物种的多样性、组成和结构异质性与食草性无关。因此，在这个高度多样化的热带雨林中，没有发现视觉明显效应或关联抗性效应。这些发现强调了垂直结构在塑造自然群落中食草性模式的重要性。
