Food limitation and insect outbreaks: complex dynamics in plant–herbivore models

Summary1 The population dynamics of many herbivorous insects are characterized by rapid outbreaks, during which the insects severely defoliate their host plants. These outbreaks are separated by periods of low insect density and little defoliation. In many cases, the underlying cause of these outbreaks is unknown. 2 Mechanistic models are an important tool for understanding population outbreaks, but existing consumer–resource models predict that severe defoliation should happen much more often than is seen in nature. 3 We develop new models to describe the population dynamics of plants and insect herbivores. Our models show that outbreaking insects may be resource‐limited without inflicting unrealistic levels of defoliation. 4 We tested our models against two different types of field data. The models successfully predict many major features of natural outbreaks. Our results demonstrate that insect outbreaks can be explained by a combination of food limitation in the herbivore and defoliation and intraspecific competition in the host plant.