10.5061/DRYAD.C3V62
Bergamini, Leonardo Lima
Universidade Federal de Goiás
Lewinsohn, Thomas M.
State University of Campinas
Jorge, Leonardo R.
State University of Campinas
Almeida-Neto, Mário
Universidade Federal de Goiás
Data from: Manifold influences of phylogenetic structure on a
plant-herbivore network
Dryad
dataset
2016
Cecidomyiidae
ecological interaction
Asymmetry
2016-09-23T11:52:13Z
2016-09-23T11:52:13Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.03567
7501 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Ecologists are increasingly aware of the interplay between evolutionary
history and ecological processes in shaping current species interaction
patterns. The inclusion of phylogenetic relationships in studies of
species interaction networks has shown that closely related species
commonly interact with sets of similar species. Notably, the degree of
phylogenetic conservatism in antagonistic ecological interactions is
frequently stronger among species at lower trophic levels than among those
at higher trophic levels. One hypothesis that accounts for this asymmetry
is that competition among consumer species promotes resource partitioning
and offsets the maintenance of dietary similarity by phylogenetic inertia.
Here, we used a regional plant-herbivore network comprised of Asteraceae
species and flower-head endophagous insects to evaluate how the strength
of phylogenetic conservatism in species interactions differs between the
two trophic levels. We also addressed whether the asymmetry in the
strength of the phylogenetic signal between plants and animals depends on
the overall degree of relatedness among the herbivores. We show that,
beyond the previously reported compositional similarity, closely related
species also share a greater proportion of counterpart phylogenetic
history, both for resource and consumer species. Comparison of the
patterns found in the entire network with those found in subnetworks
composed of more phylogenetically restricted groups of herbivores provides
evidence that resource partitioning occurs mostly at deeper phylogenetic
levels, so that a positive phylogenetic signal in antagonist similarity is
detectable even between closely related consumers in monophyletic
subnetworks. The asymmetry in signal strength between trophic levels is
most apparent in the way network modules reflect resource phylogeny, both
for the entire network and for subnetworks. Taken together, these results
suggest that evolutionary processes, such as phylogenetic conservatism and
independent colonization history of the insect groups may be the main
forces generating the phylogenetic structure observed in this particular
plant–herbivore network system.
Phylogenetic tree of the Asteraceae speciesPlant phylogeny was constructed
by combining the information from a composite tree of the Asteraceae
family (Funk et al. 2009) for most genera, with taxonomy serving as a
surrogate for phylogenetic relationships of nodes for which no information
was available. When even the taxonomy was unable to provide relationships,
unresolved nodes were left as polytomies. Species were also attached as
polytomies deriving from each genus.ast.nexPhylogenetic tree of the
endophagous insect speciesThis is an informal tree constructed by
taxonomic substitution (sensu Bininda-Edmonds et al. 2001) of the
available phylogenetic information for the insect species collected in our
study. Starting with a purely taxonomic tree, we added information on the
relationships between taxa whenever available (Supplementary material 1
Figure A1).endo.nexAsteraceae-Herbivore interaction networkAssociations
between Asteraceae and flower-head endophagous insects were assessed
quantitatively in 20 remnants of Cerrado vegetation in southeastern Brazil
(Almeida-Neto et al. 2011).The sampled sites were spaced from 0.6 to 41.4
km apart (mean distance = 16.3 km), at elevations ranging from 600 to 950
m. Plants and insects were sampled from April to May 2003. The sampling
design consisted of 15 transects of 30m × 5m, randomly allocated in
relation to the edge of the areas. We sampled flower heads from at least
20 individuals of each Asteraceae species, collecting about 80 mL of
flower-heads per individual plant whenever available. In the laboratory,
the flower-head samples were kept in plastic containers covered with a
mesh lid. Adult herbivore emergence was checked at least weekly for a
period of two months. We spent about four person-hours collecting
flower-heads in each period and site. Further information on sampling,
vegetation, and studied areas can be found in Almeida-Neto et al. (2010,
2011). For the purpose of this study, both species and their interactions
were integrated into a single regional plant-herbivore network, depicting
the presence or absence of interactions between each plant-herbivore pair.
We only included in the regional interaction network the plant and insect
species that occurred in at least five (25%) of the sampled areas. By
constructing the network in this way, we aimed to minimize the effect of
spatial mismatch on the structure of plant-herbivore interactions. Among
the 1210 plant-herbivore pairs included in our network, only 12 do not
co-occur in at least one site.interaction_network.txt
São Paulo
Brazil