10.5061/DRYAD.CFXPNVX6G
Karban, Richard
0000-0002-1565-2429
University of California, Davis
Grof-Tisza, Patrick
University of Eastern Finland
Couchoux, Charline
Université du Québec à Rimouski
Data for Sagebrush: Consistent individual variation in plant
communication: Do plants have personalities?
Dryad
dataset
2021
FOS: Biological sciences
U.S. Department of Agriculture*
2022-04-18T00:00:00Z
2022-04-18T00:00:00Z
en
8809 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Animal biologists have recently focused on individual variation in
behavioral traits and have found that individuals of many species have
personalities. These are defined as consistent intraspecific differences
in behaviors that are repeatable across different situations and stable
over time. When animals sense danger, some individuals will alert
neighbors with alarm calls and both calling and responding vary
consistently among individuals. Plants, including sagebrush, emit volatile
cues when they are attacked by herbivores and neighbors perceive these
cues and reduce their own damage. We experimentally transferred volatiles
between pairs of sagebrush plants to evaluate whether individuals showed
consistent variation in their effectiveness as emitters and as receivers
of cues. We found that 64% of the variance in chewing damage to branches
over the growing season was attributable to the identity of the individual
receiving the cues. This variation could have been caused by inherent
differences in the plants as well as by differences in the environments
where they grew and their histories. We found that 5% of the variance in
chewing damage was attributable to the identity of the emitter that
provided the cue. This fraction of variation was statistically significant
and could not be attributed to the environmental conditions of the
receiver. Effective receivers were also relatively effective emitters,
indicating consistency across different situations. Pairs of receivers and
emitters that were effective communicators in 2018 were again relatively
effective in 2019, indicating consistency over time. These results suggest
that plants have repeatable individual personalities with respect to alarm
calls.
We transferred volatiles from clipped emitter plants to branches of
receiver plants at the start of the season. Volatiles from each emitter
were transferred to 10 receiver individuals and 10 branches of each
receiver were incubated for 24 hrs with volatiles from 10 emitters. At the
end of the season, we estimated the proportion of leaves on receiver
branches that had been attacked by chewing herbivores. This allowed us to
estimate the proportion of the variance in levels of damage to each branch
that were associated with the identity of the receiver plant and to the
identify of the emitter individual. We conducted a second transfer
experiment the following year. We transferred volatiles between pairs of
emitters and receivers that had been effective communicators and pairs
that had been ineffective communicators. Again we measured chewing damage
at the end of the season to evaluate whether pairs that were effective in
one year were also effective the following year.
The data set includes 40 receiver plants, each of which was incubated with
volatiles from 10 emitters = 400 data points. For 9 of the branches, the
tags were lost and the data points are missing in these cases. The first
column indicates the identity of the receiver plant. The number has no
significance beyond this identification. The second column indicates the
chemotype of both the emitter and receiver. This designation indicates the
most common volatile constituent: c is for camphor and t is for
alpha-thujone. The third column indicates the identity of the emitter
plant. The fourth column indicates the degree of relatedness between the
emitter and receiver plants. Values range from -1 to 1 based on 8
microsatellites. The fifth column indicates the number of inflorescences
produced by each branch. The sixth column indicates the percentage of
leaves on each branch that had chewing damage at the end of the season.
The experimental transfers were conducted over a 5 day period and the
seventh column indicates the day of the transfer.