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Climate-driven diversity dynamics in plants and plant-feeding insects
Tommi Nyman1, Hans Peter Linder, Carlos Peña
1Institute for Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. tommi.nyman@systbot.uzh.ch
Ecology Letters
|April 18, 2012
Summary
Global climate, not just antagonistic coevolution, shapes insect-plant food webs. Climate-driven changes in plant diversity indirectly influence insect speciation and extinction rates, impacting overall biodiversity.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Paleoclimatology
Background:
- Species-rich insect-plant food webs traditionally attributed to coevolutionary arms races.
- Recent research suggests global climate variations influence plant clade diversity, indirectly affecting associated herbivore speciation and extinction.
- Insect communities are often richest on widespread plant species with numerous relatives.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of global climate on insect-plant food web diversity.
- To differentiate between climate-driven diffuse cospeciation and resource abundance-dependent diversification hypotheses.
- To understand how Cenozoic climate shifts drive diversity dynamics in plants and insect herbivores.
Main Methods:
- Combining paleoclimatic reconstructions with time-calibrated phylogenies.
- Analyzing patterns of plant and insect diversification.
- Comparing predictions of diffuse cospeciation versus resource abundance-dependent diversification models.
Main Results:
- Extant insect communities are richest on common plant species with many relatives.
- This pattern may result from climate-driven diffuse cospeciation or resource abundance-dependent diversification.
- Cenozoic climate changes offer opportunities to study climate's role in plant and insect diversity.
Conclusions:
- Global climate variation is a significant indirect driver of insect herbivore diversity.
- Distinguishing between diffuse cospeciation and resource abundance-dependent diversification requires further phylogenetic and paleovegetation data.
- Understanding climate's impact on plant and insect diversity dynamics is crucial for evolutionary ecology.
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