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Herbivore effects on developmental instability and fecundity of holm oaks

  • Plant Animal Interactions
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Abstract

Plants are able to compensate for loss of tissue due to herbivores at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, masking detrimental effects of herbivory on plant fitness at these scales. The stressing effect of herbivory could also produce instability in the development of plant modules, and measures of such instability may reflect the fitness consequences of herbivory if instability is related to components of plant fitness. We analyse the relationships between herbivory, developmental instability and production of female flowers and fruits of holm oak Quercus ilex trees by means of herbivore removal experiments. Removal of leaf herbivores reduced herbivory rates at the tree level, but had no effect on mean production of female flowers or mature fruits, whereas herbivory tended to enhance flower production and had no effect on fruit abortion at the shoot level. Differences in herbivory levels between shoots of the same branch did not affect the size and fluctuating asymmetry of intact leaves. These results indicate compensation for herbivory at the tree level and over-compensation at the shoot level in terms of allocation of resources to female flower production. Removal of insect herbivores produced an increase in the mean developmental instability of leaves at the tree level in the year following the insecticide treatment, and there was a direct relationship between herbivory rates in the current year and leaf fluctuating asymmetry the following year irrespective of herbivore removal treatment. Finally, the production of pistillate flowers and fruits by trees was inversely related to the mean fluctuating asymmetry of leaves growing the same year. Leaf fluctuating asymmetry was thus an estimator of the stressing effects of herbivory on adult trees, an effect that was delayed to the following year. As leaf fluctuating asymmetry was also related to tree fecundity, asymmetry levels provided a sensitive measure of plant performance under conditions of compensatory responses to herbivory.

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Acknowledgements

Hilda Fernández de Córdova and Carlos Marcos gave us permission to work on their land. Chema Torres helped us during field work and J. Barandica, F. López and J.V. Zorrilla with leaf area measurements. J. Clobert gave us statistical advice. Comments of T. Sachs, G. Moreno and K.C. Larson on an early draft and those of two anonymous referees during review were very helpful. F.J.P. was funded by an FPI grant from the Consejería de Educación y Juventud of the Junta de Extremadura while carrying out field work, and M.D. by a grant of the Spanish CICYT while writing the manuscript. This paper is a contribution to the project PAC-02–008 of the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales, Facultad de Ciencias del Medio Ambiente, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 45071, Toledo, Spain

    Mario Díaz

  2. Departamento de Biología y Producción de los Vegetales, E.U.I.T. Forestal, Centro Universitario, Universidad de Extremadura, 10600, Plasencia, Cáceres, Spain

    Fernando J. Pulido

  3. Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, CNRS UMR 7103, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 Quai St. Bernard, Case 237, 75252, Paris Cedex 05, France

    Anders P. Møller

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  1. Mario Díaz
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Correspondence to Mario Díaz.

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Díaz, M., Pulido, F.J. & Møller, A.P. Herbivore effects on developmental instability and fecundity of holm oaks. Oecologia 139, 224–234 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-004-1491-9

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