Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA.
Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA.
Am J Bot. 2024 Jan;111(1):e16263. doi: 10.1002/ajb2.16263. Epub 2024 Jan 14.
Plant traits and insect herbivory have been highly studied within the modern record but only to a limited extent within the paleontological. Preservation influences what can be measured within the fossil record, but modern methods are also not compatible with paleobotanical methods. To remedy this knowledge gap, a comparable framework was created here using modern and paleobotanical methods, allowing for future comparisons within the fossil record.
Insect feeding damage on selected tree species at Harvard Forest, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and La Selva were characterized using the damage type system prevalent within paleobotanical studies and compared with leaf traits. Linear models and random forest analyses tested the influence of leaf traits on total, specialized, gall, and mine frequency and diversity.
Structural traits like leaf dry mass per area and palatability traits, including lignin and phosphorus concentrations, are important variables affecting gall and mine damage. The significance and strength of trait-herbivory relationships varied across forest types, which is likely driven by differences in local insect populations.
This work addresses the persistent gap between modern and paleoecological studies focusing on the influence of leaf traits on insect herbivory. This is important as modern climate change alters our understanding of plant-insect interactions, providing a need for contextualizing these relationships within evolutionary time. The fossil record provides information on terrestrial response to past climatic events and, thus, should be implemented when considering how to preserve biodiversity under current and future global change.
植物性状和昆虫食草性在现代记录中得到了广泛研究，但在古生物学中研究的程度有限。保存会影响在化石记录中可以测量到的内容，但现代方法也与古植物学方法不兼容。为了弥补这一知识差距，在这里使用现代和古植物学方法创建了一个可比框架，允许在化石记录中进行未来的比较。
使用在古植物学研究中普遍存在的损伤类型系统，对哈佛森林、史密森尼环境研究中心和拉塞尔瓦选定树种的昆虫取食损伤进行了特征描述，并与叶片特征进行了比较。线性模型和随机森林分析测试了叶片特征对总损伤、专食性损伤、虫瘿和虫蚀的频率和多样性的影响。
结构特征，如叶面积干质量和适口性特征，包括木质素和磷浓度，是影响虫瘿和虫蚀损伤的重要变量。在不同的森林类型中，性状-食草关系的重要性和强度有所不同，这可能是由当地昆虫种群的差异造成的。
这项工作解决了现代和古生态学研究之间持续存在的差距，重点关注叶片特征对昆虫食草性的影响。这一点很重要，因为现代气候变化改变了我们对植物-昆虫相互作用的理解，需要在进化时间内对这些关系进行背景化。化石记录提供了有关陆地对过去气候事件的反应的信息，因此，在考虑如何在当前和未来的全球变化下保护生物多样性时，应该将其纳入考虑。
