Abstract
For some animals, the habitat which they first experience can influence the type of habitat which they select later in life and, thus, potentially their population distribution and dynamics. However, for many insect herbivores, whose natal habitat may consist of a single hostplant, the consequences of natal hostplant experience remain untested in landscapes relevant to the adult, which may select not only among plants, but among plant patches. As a first step towards understanding how natal hostplant experience shapes patterns of insect feeding damage in landscapes relevant to adults, we conducted partially caged field experiments with diamondback moths that were reared on either mustard or collard plants and then allowed to choose among and within patches of plants that varied in plant density and composition. We predicted that natal hostplant experience would interact with patch size and composition to influence the number of diamondback moth offspring and feeding damage per plant. As predicted, when moths were reared on collards, we found more offspring on and damage to collard plants in four-collard patches than in two-collard patches (i.e., resource concentration), but no difference when moths were reared on mustards. Contrary to predictions, we found no difference in the number of offspring on or damage to mixed plant patches compared with two- or four-collard plant patches regardless of natal hostplant type. Our research suggests that prior hostplant experience has complex consequences for how insects and their feeding damage are distributed in patchy environments and highlights the need for future research in this area.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank A. Basili, T. Callahan, J. Cassara, M. Cenzer, Z. Haack, J. Hart, T. Jepsen, Z. Lankist, J. Larimer, M. Larson, D. McNutt, J. Mutz, J. Ogilvie, A. Pastore, C. Peterson, R. Weidner, and M. Wiebush for the assistance with cage construction and/or data collection. A. Prinzing and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript.
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ACM conceived of the experiment, collected and analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. BDI and NU contributed to the experimental design and interpretation of the results and edited the manuscript.
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Communicated by Andreas Prinzing.
This research adds a novel dimension to our understanding of the ecological outcomes of prior experience for insect herbivores. While much research has shown how natal hostplant experiences can influence the preference of insects choosing among individual plants, we show for the first time that natal hostplant experience can bias the distribution of offspring and their feeding damage among patches of plants. Thus, this work suggests that accounting for prior hostplant experience may help us to predict how populations of insect herbivores and their feeding damage are distributed in patchy environments, which may carry implications for the reintroduction of species and mixed-crop pest management.
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Merwin, A.C., Inouye, B.D. & Underwood, N. Natal-habitat experience mediates the relationship between insect and hostplant densities. Oecologia 193, 261–271 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04639-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04639-3