Departamento de Biologia Geral, Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros, Montes Claros, MG 39401-089, Brazil..
Centro de Estudos Ambientais do Cerrado, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Reserva Ecológica do IBGE, Brasília, DF 70312-970, Brazil.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Sep 20;944:173949. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173949. Epub 2024 Jun 12.
Interactions between plants and herbivorous insects are often phylogenetically structured, with closely related insect species using similar sets of species or lineages of plants, while phylogenetically closer plants tend to share high proportions of their herbivore insect species. Notably, these phylogenetic constraints in plant-herbivore interactions tend to be more pronounced among internal plant-feeding herbivores (i.e., endophages) than among external feeders (i.e., exophages). In the context of growing human-induced habitat conversion and the global proliferation of exotic species, it is crucial to understand how ecological networks respond to land-use intensification and the increasing presence of exotic plants. In this study, we analyzed plant-herbivore network data from various locations of the World to ascertain the degree to which land-use intensity and the prevalence of exotic plants induce predictable changes in their network topology - measured by levels of nestedness and modularity - and phylogenetic structures. Additionally, we investigated whether the intimacy of plant-herbivore interactions, contrasting endophagous with exophagous networks, modulate changes in network structure. Our findings reveal that most plant-herbivore networks are characterized by significant phylogenetic and topological structures. However, neither these structures did not show consistent changes in response to increased levels of land-use intensify. On the other hand, for the networks composed of endophagous herbivores, the level of nestedness was higher in the presence of a high proportion of exotic plants. Additionally, for networks of exophagous herbivores, we observed an increase in the phylogenetic structure of interactions due to exotic host dominance. These results underscore the differential impacts of exotic species and land-use intensity on the phylogenetic and topological structures of plant-herbivore networks.
植物与草食性昆虫之间的相互作用通常具有系统发育结构，亲缘关系密切的昆虫物种使用相似的植物物种或谱系集，而亲缘关系较近的植物往往具有较高比例的草食性昆虫物种。值得注意的是，与外部取食者（即外食者）相比，植物-草食性昆虫相互作用中的这些系统发育约束在内部取食者（即内食者）中更为明显。在人类引起的栖息地转换和外来物种全球扩散的背景下，了解生态网络如何对土地利用集约化和外来植物的增加做出反应至关重要。在这项研究中，我们分析了来自世界各地的植物-草食性昆虫网络数据，以确定土地利用强度和外来植物的存在程度在多大程度上可以预测网络拓扑结构（通过嵌套度和模块性来衡量）和系统发育结构的变化。此外，我们还研究了植物-草食性昆虫相互作用的密切程度，对比了内食者和外食者网络，是否会调节网络结构的变化。我们的研究结果表明，大多数植物-草食性昆虫网络具有显著的系统发育和拓扑结构。然而，无论是这些结构都没有表现出一致的变化，以响应土地利用强度的增加。另一方面，对于由内食性草食性昆虫组成的网络，在存在高比例的外来植物时，嵌套度更高。此外，对于外食性草食性昆虫网络，我们观察到由于外来宿主优势，相互作用的系统发育结构增加。这些结果强调了外来物种和土地利用强度对植物-草食性昆虫网络系统发育和拓扑结构的不同影响。
