Effects of decomposers and herbivores on plant performance and aboveground plant-insect interactions
By K. Poveda, I. Steffan‐Dewenter, S. Scheu, T. Tscharntke. 2005
124 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Most ecologists acknowledge that plants are subject to complex interactions between both below- and aboveground dwelling animals, However, these complex interactions are seldomly investigated simultaneously. In a factorial common garden experiment we tested single and combined effects of decomposers, root herbivores and leaf herbivores on the growth, flower visitation, and abundance of naturally colonizing aphids and parasitoids on wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis). We found that the individual presence of either root herbivores or decomposers resulted in increased aphid abundance. demonstrating that the same aboveground plant-insect interaction can be released by different belowground processes. Enhanced aphid densities caused higher numbers of parasitoids. Furthermore, decomposers increased plant growth and plant fitness (measured as the number of seeds produced), indicating that mustard may benefit from nutrients provided by decomposers, regardless whether plants are attacked by root herbivores or leaf herbivores, or both simultaneously. More flower visits were observed in plants attacked by root herbivores but without leaf herbivores than in plants with both herbivores, suggesting that root herbivory can modify flower attractivity to pollinators. Our results suggest that patterns in plant-insect interactions above the ground are not only affected by aboveground factors but also by a wealth of different belowground processes mediated by the plant.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/42e5e5cd54f0533e7ae8bf10745ef8f980e2e49e
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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
In Insect Science
In Plant Science
Citations in the corpus
- Effects of Soil Organisms on Aboveground Plant-Insect Interactions in the Field: Patterns, Mechanisms and the Role of Methodology (2018, unknown): “One study reports positive effects of root herbivory by coleopteran herbivory on aboveground sap suckers (Poveda et al., 2005).”
- Summer drought alters plant‐mediated competition between foliar‐ and root‐feeding insects (2007, background): “…root r 2007 The Authors Journal compilation r 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Global Change Biology, 13, 866–877 herbivores were not excluded, and Poveda et al. (2005) found that parasitoid populations increased in line with increasing aphid populations under a root herbivore treatment, but…”
- Plant‐mediated effects of soil invertebrates and summer drought on above‐ground multitrophic interactions (2011, background): “The abundance of aphids was increased by decomposers, and the number of aphid parasitoids increased at the same rate as aphid populations (Poveda et al. 2005).”
- Multitrophic interactions below and above ground: en route to the next level (2011, background): “…be caused by changes in herbivore quality or quantity due to systemically induced resistance in infested plants, which may directly affect the abundance and performance of parasitoids feeding on these inferior hosts (Poveda et al. 2005; Soler et al. 2005; Jansen et al. 2009; Qiu 2011 The Authors.”
- Conservation biological control and enemy diversity on a landscape scale (2007, background): “Belowground processes affect aboveground biocontrol via plant-mediated effects (Wardle and van der Putten, 2002; Poveda et al., 2005), but scale-dependence of such interactions needs to be explored.”