Anthropogenic Changes in Tropospheric Composition Increase Susceptibility of Soybean to Insect Herbivory

By Jason Hamilton, O. Dermody, M. Aldea, A. Zangerl, Alistair Rogers, M. Berenbaum, Evan H. DeLucia. 2005

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Increased concentrations of CO2 and ozone are predicted to lower nutritional quality of leaves for insect herbivores, which may increase herbivory as insects eat more to meet their nutritional demands. To test this prediction, we measured levels of herbivory in soybean grown in ambient air and air enriched with CO2 or O3 using free air gas concentration enrichment (FACE). Under open-air conditions and exposure to the full insect community, elevated [CO2] increased the susceptibility of soybeans to herbivory early in the season, whereas exposure to elevated [O3] seemed to have no effect. In the region of the canopy exposed to high levels of herbivory, the percentage of leaf area removed increased from 5 to >11% at elevated [CO2]. We found no evidence for compensatory feeding at elevated [CO2] where leaf nitrogen content and C:N ratio were unaltered in plants experiencing increased herbivory. However, levels of leaf sugars were increased by 31% at elevated [CO2] and coincided with a significant increase in the density of the invasive species Popillia japonica Newman (Japanese beetle). In two-choice feeding trials, Japanese beetles and Mexican bean beetles (Epilachna varivestis Mulsant.) preferred foliage grown at elevated [CO2] to foliage grown at ambient [CO2]. These data support the hypothesis that the increased level of sugar in leaves grown at elevated [CO2] may act as a phagostimulant for the Japanese beetle. If these results apply more widely to soybean production, the expectation of agricultural yield increases as a result of increasing elevated [CO2] may need to be reevaluated.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7ffd3da6de3aaad63e4cd9125bf00776126fc0b2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atmospheric Science

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide and ozone alter soybean diseases at SoyFACE (2010, methodology): “In each year of our study, sixteen 20 m diameter octagonal experimental plots were established within a 16 ha soybean field (Hamilton et al., 2005), and were divided evenly into four randomized blocks each containing one of the four different atmospheric treatments: ambient, elevated CO2 (550 mmol…”
Global warming presents new challenges for maize pest management (2008, background): “future changes in temperature and the effects of simultaneously elevated levels of atmospheric CO2, which has been shown to indirectly increase susceptibility to insect pest feeding in other agricultural systems [54, 55].”
Elevated CO2 effects on plant carbon, nitrogen, and water relations: six important lessons from FACE. (2009, background): “Equally FACE has revealed factors operating in the open field situation that were not or cannot be identified by chamber experiments, for example, increased herbivory and performance of herbivore populations (Holton et al., 2003; Hamilton et al., 2004; Zavala et al., 2008).”
Climate change effects on poikilotherm tritrophic interactions (2008, background): “In areas favorable for YST, herbivore feeding by all species and competition from grasses are insufficient to control the weed because of high seed production and survival, and plant compensation (Gutierrez et al. 2005).”
Predicting the effects of climate change on natural enemies of agricultural pests (2010, background): “Herbivory of soybean under field conditions is affected by down-regulating gene expression for a protease specific deterrent to coleopteran herbivores (Hamilton et al., 2005; Zavala et al., 2008).”
Impact of Climate Change on Vegetable Cultivation - A Review (2014, background): “Relative humidity and CO 2 can potentially affect pest and disease occurrence (Hamilton et al., 2005).”
The Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Insect Pests (2021, background): “[67] conducted an experiment in which soybeans were grown at elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations.”