Abstract
Plants growing under reduced water availability can affect insect herbivores differently, in some instances benefitting them. However, the forces mediating these positive impacts remain mostly unclear. To identify how water availability impacts plant quality and multi-trophic interactions, we conducted manipulative field studies with two populations of the specialist herbivore Pieris rapae, and its host plant, Rorippa indica. We found that P. rapae larvae experienced higher survival on R. indica growing under low water availability compared with plants grown under high water availability. Higher survival of eggs and larvae was related to the reduced abundance of other herbivores and natural enemies. Water availability had differential impacts on other members of the herbivore community by altering plant quality. Low water availability decreased the quality of R. indica to most herbivores, as indicated by reduced abundance in the field and decreased relative growth rate in laboratory feeding assays. In contrast, P. rapae larval performance was not affected by sympatric R. indica grown under different water availability. These results indicate that local P. rapae populations possess physiological adaptations to overcome fluctuations in host quality. Our findings illustrate that reduced water availability is beneficial to a specialist herbivore but detrimental to most other herbivores. Our work highlights the complex effects of the arthropod communities associated with plants in determining the impacts of water availability on insect herbivores.
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Data availability statement
Data in this manuscript are available in the Dryad Digital Repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g1jwstqq0.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the International Agriculture and Development Graduate Program (College of Agricultural Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, INTAD competitive grant) for providing monetary support and feedback on experimental design. We thank Chi-Shun Chang, Yi-Zhang Wang, Han-Rong Li, Kazumu Kuramitsu, and Kai Han for collecting data. Special thanks to Dr. Yooichi Kainoh for arranging space and logistics of experiments in Japan, Dr. Ching-Wen Tan and Wei-Ting Chen for helpful information on the experiments in Taiwan, and Dr. Charles Mason, Dr. Asher Jones, and Jagdeep Singh Sidhu for feedbacks on the manuscript.
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PAL, KN, CKH, WPC, and GWF conceived the ideas, and designed the methodology. PAL and JAO analyzed the data. PAL, CML, and CHS collected the data. PAL, CML, JAO, KN, CKH, WPC, and GWF wrote the manuscript.
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Communicated by Merijn Kant.
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Lin, PA., Liu, CM., Ou, JA. et al. Changes in arthropod community but not plant quality benefit a specialist herbivore on plants under reduced water availability. Oecologia 195, 383–396 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04845-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04845-z