Leclère Thomas, Gerhold Pille
Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Estonian University of Life Sciences Tartu Estonia.
Ecol Evol. 2024 Dec 2;14(12):e70660. doi: 10.1002/ece3.70660. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Interactions between plants and insects have long fascinated scientists. While some plants rely on insects for pollination and seed dispersal, insects rely on plants for food or as a habitat. Despite extensive research investigating pair-wise species interactions, few studies have characterized plant and insect communities simultaneously, making it unclear if diverse plant communities are generally associated with diverse insect communities. This work aims to better understand the historical and evolutionary relationships between plant and insect phylogenetic diversity (PD) on islands. We hypothesized that phylogenetically diverse plant communities (i.e., high PD) support diverse insect communities, with the relationship varying with island isolation, area, age, and latitude. Species lists for plants and insects were compiled from the published literature, and plant PD was calculated using ´standardized mean pairwise distance´ (SES.MPD) and ´standardized mean nearest taxon distance´ (SES.MNTD). For insects, PD was estimated using the number of genera, families, and orders. We found that plant diversity in evolutionary recent times (SES.MNTD) is associated with recent insect diversity (number of genera), but no relationship was found between plant and insect diversity across whole phylogenies (plant SES.MPD vs. number of insect families). Distant islands generally support high PD of plants (high SES.MPD and SES.MNTD) and insects (low number of genera). Plant and insect PD was generally high on small islands, except for plant SES.MPD revealing no relationship with island size. Insect PD was somewhat higher on young islands (low number of families), whereas there was no relationship between island age and plant PD. Plant SES.MPD was higher on high latitude islands, yet we did not find significant relationships between the latitude and the metrics of insect PD or plant SES.MNTD. These findings suggest that protecting high plant PD may also help conserve high insect PD, with a focus on small and distant islands as potential hotspots of phylogenetic diversity across multiple taxa.
植物与昆虫之间的相互作用长期以来一直吸引着科学家。一些植物依靠昆虫进行授粉和种子传播，而昆虫则依靠植物获取食物或作为栖息地。尽管已有大量研究调查了成对物种之间的相互作用，但很少有研究同时刻画植物和昆虫群落，因此尚不清楚多样的植物群落是否通常与多样的昆虫群落相关联。这项工作旨在更好地理解岛屿上植物和昆虫系统发育多样性（PD）之间的历史和进化关系。我们假设系统发育多样的植物群落（即高PD）支持多样的昆虫群落，且这种关系会随岛屿隔离度、面积、年龄和纬度而变化。植物和昆虫的物种列表是从已发表的文献中汇编而来的，植物PD使用“标准化平均成对距离”（SES.MPD）和“标准化平均最近分类单元距离”（SES.MNTD）进行计算。对于昆虫，PD使用属、科和目的数量进行估计。我们发现近代进化过程中的植物多样性（SES.MNTD）与近代昆虫多样性（属的数量）相关，但在整个系统发育中未发现植物和昆虫多样性之间的关系（植物SES.MPD与昆虫科的数量）。偏远岛屿通常支持植物的高PD（高SES.MPD和SES.MNTD）和昆虫的高PD（属的数量少）。除了植物SES.MPD与岛屿大小无关系外，小岛上的植物和昆虫PD通常较高。年轻岛屿上昆虫的PD略高一些（科的数量少），而岛屿年龄与植物PD之间没有关系。高纬度岛屿上植物的SES.MPD较高，但我们未发现纬度与昆虫PD指标或植物SES.MNTD之间存在显著关系。这些发现表明，保护高植物PD也可能有助于保护高昆虫PD，应将重点放在小而偏远的岛屿上，将其作为多个分类群系统发育多样性的潜在热点。
