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Feeding damage to plants increases with plant size across 21 Brassicaceae species

花匠小妙招
2025-07-22 00:03

摘要

Plant size is a major predictor of ecological functioning. We tested the hypothesis that feeding damage to plants increases with plant size, as the conspicuousness of large plants makes resource finding and colonisation easier. Further, large plants can be attractive to herbivores, as they offer greater amounts and ranges of resources and niches, but direct evidence from experiments testing size effects on feeding damage and consequently on plant fitness is so far missing. We established a common garden experiment with a plant size gradient (10-130 cm height) using 21 annual Brassicaceae species, and quantified plant size, biomass and number of all aboveground components (flowers, fruits, leaves, stems) and their proportional feeding damage. Plant reproductive fitness was measured using seed number, 1000 seed weight and total seed weight. Feeding damage to the different plant components increased with plant size or component biomass, with mean damage levels being approximately 30 % for flowers, 5 % for fruits and 1 % for leaves and stems. Feeding damage affected plant reproductive fitness depending on feeding damage type, with flower damage having the strongest effect, shown by greatly reduced seed number, 1000 seed weight and total seed weight. Finally, we found an overall negative effect of plant size on 1000 seed weight, but not on seed number and total seed weight. In conclusion, being conspicuous and attractive to herbivores causes greater flower damage leading to higher fitness costs for large plants, which might be partly counterbalanced by benefits such as enhanced competitive/compensatory abilities or more mutualistic pollinator visits.展开▼

机译：植物大小是生态功能的主要预测指标。我们检验了以下假设：由于大型植物的显眼性使得寻找资源和定殖变得更加容易，因此对植物的进食伤害随植物大小的增加而增加。此外，大型植物可能对食草动物具有吸引力，因为它们提供了更多数量和范围的资源和生态位，但是到目前为止，尚缺乏直接的证据来证明尺寸对食料损害进而对植物适应性的影响。我们建立了一个普通的花园实验，使用21种一年生的十字花科植物，其植物大小梯度（高度为10-130 cm），并定量了植物大小，生物量和所有地上成分（花，果实，叶子，茎）的数量及其成比例的摄食损害。使用种子数量，1000种子重量和总种子重量来测量植物的生殖适应性。不同植物成分的进食伤害随植物大小或成分生物量的增加而增加，花朵的平均伤害水平约为30％，果实为5％，叶和茎为1％。摄食危害根据摄食危害的类型而影响植物的生殖适应性，其中花害具有最强的作用，其表现为大大减少的种子数量，1000粒种子的种子重量和总种子重量。最后，我们发现植物大小对1000种子重量有总体负面影响，但对种子数量和总种子重量没有负面影响。总之，对草食动物显着和有吸引力会导致更大的花害，从而导致大型植物的适应性成本增加，这可能会被诸如增强的竞争/补偿能力或更多的互粉授粉者之类的好处所抵消。展开▼