Guild-specific patterns of species richness and host specialization in plant-herbivore food webs from a tropical forest

0350985 - BC 2011 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Novotný, Vojtěch - Miller, S. E. - Baje, L. - Balagawi, S. - Basset, Y. - Čížek, Lukáš - Craft, K. J. - Dem, F. - Drew, R. A. I. - Hulcr, J. - Lepš, Jan - Lewis, O. T. - Pokon, R. - Stewart, A. J. A. - Samuelson, G. A. - Weiblen, G. D.
Guild-specific patterns of species richness and host specialization in plant-herbivore food webs from a tropical forest.
Journal of Animal Ecology. Roč. 79, č. 6 (2010), s. 1193-1203. ISSN 0021-8790. E-ISSN 1365-2656
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA206/09/0115; GA ČR GD206/08/H044; GA ČR GAP505/10/0673; GA AV ČR IAA600960712; GA MŠMT LC06073; GA MŠMT ME09082
Grant - others:National Science Foundation(US) DEB 9628840; National Science Foundation(US) DEB 9707928; National Science Foundation(US) DEB 0211591
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z50070508
Keywords : apparent competition * effective specialization * herbivorous guild
Subject RIV: EH - Ecology, Behaviour
Impact factor: 4.457, year: 2010

The extent to which plant-herbivore feeding interactions are specialized is key to understand the processes maintaining the diversity of both tropical forest plants and their insect herbivores. However, studies documenting the full complexity of tropical plant-herbivore food webs are lacking. 2. We describe a complex, species-rich plant-herbivore food web for lowland rain forest in Papua New Guinea, resolving 6818 feeding links between 224 plant species and 1490 herbivore species drawn from 11 distinct feeding guilds. By standardizing sampling intensity and the phylogenetic diversity of focal plants, we are able to make the first rigorous and unbiased comparisons of specificity patterns across feeding guilds. 3. Specificity was highly variable among guilds, spanning almost the full range of theoretically possible values from extreme trophic generalization to monophagy.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0190837