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Plant Strategies along Resource Gradients
The American Naturalist
|August 21, 2018
Summary
Plant defenses vary with resource availability. Under low resources, plants focus on acquisition, but high resources favor resistance or tolerance strategies due to herbivore pressure.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Theoretical Ecology
Background:
- Plants employ tolerance and resistance strategies against herbivores.
- Resource availability influences plant growth and defense allocation.
- Optimal conditions favoring specific plant defense strategies remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate adaptive allocation to resource acquisition, tolerance, and resistance in plants along a resource gradient.
- Utilize an eco-evolutionary model inspired by plankton communities.
- Understand how resource levels and herbivory shape plant defense strategies.
Main Methods:
- Developed an eco-evolutionary model of plant-herbivore interactions.
- Simulated plant adaptive allocation to resource acquisition, tolerance, and resistance.
- Analyzed outcomes along a resource gradient with a shared herbivore.
- Compared model predictions with density-independent optimization models.
Main Results:
- Low resource supplies favor undefended, acquisition-specialist plant strategies.
- High resource supplies lead to high herbivore abundance, favoring resistant strategies or coexistence of resistant and tolerant plants.
- Adaptive allocation significantly impacts species biomasses.
- Density dependence, mediated by resources and herbivores, drives increased plant resistance.
Conclusions:
- Plant defense strategies are dynamically shaped by resource availability and herbivore pressure.
- Eco-evolutionary models reveal the importance of density dependence in plant defense evolution.
- Resource gradients select for different plant strategies, impacting community structure.
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