| Title |
Plant reproductive traits mediate tritrophic feedback effects within an obligate brood-site pollination mutualism
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Oecologia, July 2015
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s00442-015-3372-9 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Anusha Krishnan, Mahua Ghara, Srinivasan Kasinathan, Gautam Kumar Pramanik, Santosh Revadi, Renee M. Borges |
| Abstract |
Plants, herbivores and parasitoids affect each other directly and indirectly; however, feedback effects mediated by host plant traits have rarely been demonstrated in these tritrophic interactions. Brood-site pollination mutualisms (e.g. those involving figs and fig wasps) represent specialised tritrophic communities where the progeny of mutualistic pollinators and of non-mutualistic gallers (both herbivores) together with that of their parasitoids develop within enclosed inflorescences called syconia (hence termed brood-sites or microcosms). Plant reproductive phenology (which affects temporal brood-site availability) and inflorescence size (representing brood-site size) are plant traits that could affect reproductive resources, and hence relationships between trees, pollinators and non-pollinating wasps. Analysing wasp and seed contents of syconia, we examined direct, indirect, trophic and non-trophic relationships within the interaction web of the fig-fig wasp community of Ficus racemosa in the context of brood site size and availability. We demonstrate that in addition to direct resource competition and predator-prey (host-parasitoid) interactions, these communities display exploitative or apparent competition and trait-mediated indirect interactions. Inflorescence size and plant reproductive phenology impacted plant-herbivore and plant-parasitoid associations. These plant traits also influenced herbivore-herbivore and herbivore-parasitoid relationships via indirect effects. Most importantly, we found a reciprocal effect between within-tree reproductive asynchrony and fig wasp progeny abundances per syconium that drives a positive feedback cycle within the system. The impact of a multitrophic feedback cycle within a community built around a mutualistic core highlights the need for a holistic view of plant-herbivore-parasitoid interactions in the community ecology of mutualisms. |
X Demographics
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Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 2 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 2 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 50 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 2% |
| Mexico | 1 | 2% |
| Serbia | 1 | 2% |
| Brazil | 1 | 2% |
| Unknown | 46 | 92% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 13 | 26% |
| Student > Master | 10 | 20% |
| Student > Bachelor | 9 | 18% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 8 | 16% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 2 | 4% |
| Other | 6 | 12% |
| Unknown | 2 | 4% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 37 | 74% |
| Environmental Science | 6 | 12% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 2 | 4% |
| Psychology | 1 | 2% |
| Social Sciences | 1 | 2% |
| Other | 0 | 0% |
| Unknown | 3 | 6% |
Attention Score in Context
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All research outputs
#18,418,694
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Outputs from Oecologia
#3,651
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#189,229
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Outputs of similar age from Oecologia
#47
of 62 outputs
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