Premium
Global patterns in background losses of woody plant foliage to insects
Author(s) -
Kozlov Mikhail V.,
Lanta Vojtĕch,
Zverev Vitali,
Zvereva Elena L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
global ecology and biogeography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.164
H-Index - 152
eISSN - 1466-8238
pISSN - 1466-822X
DOI - 10.1111/geb.12347
Subject(s) - herbivore , latitude , temperate climate , woody plant , biology , ecology , tropics , ecosystem , geography , geodesy
Aim Latitudinal patterns in biotic interactions, particularly in herbivory, have been widely debated. We conducted a quantitative research synthesis to test whether background losses of woody plant foliage to insects generally decrease from the equator to the poles, and whether geographical gradients in insect herbivory are stronger at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes. Location Global terrestrial ecosystems. Methods We used published and original data (3482 point estimates of the percentage of leaf area consumed by insects, collected from 941 species of woody plants in 836 localities world‐wide) to analyse the geographical patterns in total losses of plant foliage and in losses to defoliating, leaf mining and leaf galling insects separately, and we searched for climatic factors that can explain the variation in the levels of background insect herbivory across the globe and within climate zones. Result On average, according to published data woody plants lose 7.55% of their leaf area to insects, but 4.73% according to our original data collected in a blinded way. These losses demonstrate a dome‐shaped latitudinal pattern: they peak in temperate zones, slightly decrease towards the equator and strongly decrease towards the poles. This pattern is consistent between published and original data, indicating the robustness of the detected relationship between herbivory and latitude. The climatic factors explaining these latitudinal patterns in insect herbivory differ between climate zones. Main conclusions Our study provides solid support for the hypothesis of a decrease in background herbivory with latitude, but only outside the tropics. For the first time we demonstrate that the latitudinal gradient in insect herbivory across the globe is nonlinear, i.e. its slope differs between the climate zones. In temperate and polar zones, but not in the tropics, background herbivory correlates with mean air temperatures and is therefore likely to increase with climate warming.