Defense syndromes or individual traits: What protects European lowland willows from various insect herbivores?

Sunday, November 13, 2022

2:18 PM – 2:30 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 208/209

Presenting Author(s)

Jing V. Leong

Phd Student
Biology Centre Czech Academy of Sciences
Ceske Budejovice, Jihocesky kraj, Czech Republic

Co-Author(s)

PM

Priscila Mezzomo

Czech Academy of Sciences
České Budějovice, Jihocesky kraj, Czech Republic
Pd

Paola de lima Ferreira

Aarhus University
Aarhus, Midtjylland, Denmark
PK

Petr Kozel

Czech Academy of Sciences
České Budějovice, Jihocesky kraj, Czech Republic
CS

Carlo Seifert

Georg-August-University
Göttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany
TV

Tereza Volfova

Czech Academy of Sciences
České Budějovice, Jihocesky kraj, Czech Republic
AW

Alexander Weinhold

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
BS

Brian Sedio

University of Texas
Austin, Texas
JS

Juha-Pekka Salminen

University of Turku
Turku, Varsinais-Suomi, Finland
MV

Martin Volf

Czech Academy of Sciences
České Budějovice, Jihocesky kraj, Czech Republic

Plants employ various defenses with varying effects on herbivores. Individual defense traits in plants can form defensive syndromes. Defensive syndromes may occur due to physiological and evolutionary trade-offs or to optimize plant defenses against a variety of herbivores. Here we studied chemical and physical defenses in 16 species of European willows to test for defensive syndromes. Furthermore, we analysed if defensive syndromes or individual defensive traits are better predictors of abundance, diversity and assemblage structure of generalist leaf-chewer, specialist leaf-chewers, and gallers. We recovered two main defensive syndromes that mainly differed in the investment into concentration, diversity, or activity of various phenolic compounds. Willows in the first syndrome invested in salicinoids and flavonoids, while willows in the second syndrome invested into proanthocyanidins. Other traits such as inducible volatile organic compounds or resource acquisition traits did not show a strong correlation to the syndromes. The two defensive syndromes showed weak phylogenetic signal and consisted of traits that themselves showed weak or no phylogenetic signal and high dissimilarity among the willow species.The evolutionary transition rates between the two syndromes were equal. Different arthropod groups responded to different hostplant traits that either belonged to different defensive syndromes or showed only a weak correlation with them. The recovered defensive syndromes were not better predictors of herbivore communities than individual traits. Taken together, the results suggest that negative dependencies among related metabolites sharing their substrates may contribute to formation of defensive syndromes in willows, which probably maintain other important ecological functions than anti-herbivore defence.