Predation and associational refuge drive ontogenetic niche shifts in an arctiid caterpillar

Despite the ubiquity of ontogenetic niche shifts, their drivers and consequences are poorly understood. Different nutritional requirements and stage‐specific physiological limitations have often been offered as explanations for these life history features, but emerging work has demonstrated that top‐down factors may also be important. We studied the roles of predation and associational refuge in ontogenetic niche shifts for a holometabolous insect ( Platyprepia virginalis ), which shifts habitats and host plants to pupate. We examined the effect of pupation site selection across habitats and host plants by late‐instar caterpillars on the rate of predation during the relatively vulnerable pupal stage. Studying the ontogenetic transition from mobile caterpillar to non‐feeding, sessile pupa allows isolation of top‐down effects from bottom‐up, nutritional effects. An observational study supported previous findings that feeding caterpillars preferred marsh habitats, but pupating caterpillars preferred prairie habitats. Experiments demonstrated that caterpillars preferred to pupate within a physically defended plant species. Pupation within this defended plant species resulted in reduced predation (an associational refuge), and removal of the physical defense structures negated the reduced‐predation effect. This experiment shows that ontogenetic niche shifts can be driven by predation and can involve facilitation by a host plant that provides a refuge to predation. The co‐option of plant chemical defenses by animals is widely established. However, finding a clear example in which an animal exploits a plant's physical defense is rare, especially in the context of ontogenetic niche shifts. This work shows that facilitation mediated by refuge from predation provided by host plants and life‐stage‐dependent predation risk can interact to shape species' distributions.