Changes in quantity rather than palatability of alpine meadow species induce cascading effects of long-term nitrogen fertilization on phytophagous insect abundance

Ming Hua Song, Li Li Zheng, Tan Feng Yin, Xian Zhou Zhang, Fei Hai Yu*, Johannes H.C. Cornelissen

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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    Abstract

    Questions: Do changes in plant tissue quality mediated by long-term N enrichment cascade to affect the palatability and thus abundance of phytophagous insects? Do shifts in the abundance of plant functional groups mediated by long-term N enrichment cascade to affect abundance of phytophagous insects?. Location: An alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau, China. Methods: We measured the abundance of larvae of a phytophagous moth (Gynaephora menyuanensis) in plots subjected to 8 years of fertilization with different N rates and chemical forms in an alpine meadow. In a feeding experiment with the larvae, we tested whether N rate and N form affected leaf consumption of six abundant plant species in the alpine meadow through leaf quality. Results: High N rate increased larval density by 45.6%. It increased leaf N concentration and decreased leaf C:N of four plant species, but did not affect leaf consumption on any of the six species. High N increased the abundance of more favoured graminoids, but decreased that of less favoured legumes and some forbs. Larval density was positively related to graminoid abundance and negatively related to forb abundance. Conclusions: Long-term N fertilization induced changes in both leaf quality and abundance of plant species in the community. However, the abundance of phytophagous insects was associated with shifts in plant functional group abundance but not with changes in plant palatability. These findings suggest that N-mediated changes in plant community composition may have cascading effects on insect quantity.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)867-876
    Number of pages10
    JournalJournal of Vegetation Science
    Volume29
    Issue number5
    Early online date29 Jun 2018
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Sept 2018

    Funding

    Program, Grant/Award Number: 2016YFC0502001 and 2016YFC0501803; National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 41671263 and 31570413 We thank Chun-Xiang Liu, Ju-Juan Gao, Xin-Ying Yao, Zhaxijie Li, and Mo-Zhu Wang for assistance with chemical analyses, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Prof. Peter Alpert kindly checked the English text. This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFC0502001, 2016YFC0501803) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41671263, 31570413).

    FundersFunder number
    National Natural Science Foundation of China31570413, 41671263
    National Key Research and Development Program of China2016YFC0502001, 2016YFC0501803

      Keywords

      • cascading effect
      • caterpillar
      • feeding preference
      • feeding test
      • grassland
      • nitrogen fertilization
      • palatability
      • Tibetan Plateau

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