A comment on “Variability in plant nutrients reduces insect herbivore performance”

By

Koussoroplis, Apostolos-Manuel
Klauschies, Toni
Pincebourde, Sylvain
Giron, David
Wacker, Alexander

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2019-5-10

Original Publication

One ecosystem : ecology and sustainability data journal

Volume

4

Pages

79--87

Subjects

antagonism , covariance , Non-linear averaging , synergy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/rethinkingecology.4.32252

 

Abstract

In their recent contribution, Wetzel et al. [Wetzel et al. (2016) Variability in plant nutrients reduces insect herbivore performance. Nature 539: 425-427] predict that variance in the plant nutrient level reduces herbivore performance via the nonlinear averaging effect (named Jensen’s effect by the authors) while variance in the defense level does not. We argue that the study likely underestimates the potential of plant defenses’ variance to cause Jensen’s effects for two reasons. First, this conclusion is based on the finding that the average Jensen’s effect of various defense traits on various herbivores is zero which does not imply that the Jensen’s effect of specific defense traits on specific herbivores is null, just that the effects balance each other globally. Second, the study neglects the nonlinearity effects that may arise from the synergy between nutritive and defense traits or between co-occurring defenses on herbivore performance. Covariance between interacting plant defense traits, or between plant nutritive and defense traits, can affect performance differently than would nutritive or single plant defense variance alone. Overlooking the interactive effects of plant traits and the traits’ covariance could impair the assessment of the true role of plant trait variability on herbivore populations in natural settings.