de la Fuente Pinero, Alejandro, Youngentob, Kara N., Marsh, Karen J., Krockenberger, Andrew K., Williams, Stephen E., and Cernusak, Lucas A. (2024) Relationships between abiotic factors, foliage chemistry and herbivory in a tropical montane ecosystem. Oecologia, 206. pp. 293-304.

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Abstract

Herbivore–plant interactions are fundamental processes shaping ecosystems, yet their study is challenged by their complex connections within broader ecosystem processes, requiring a nuanced understanding of ecosystem dynamics. This study investigated the relationship between nutrient availability and insect herbivory in the Australian Wet Tropics. Our objectives were threefold. Firstly, to understand what factors influence nutrient availability for plants and herbivores across the landscape; secondly, to investigate how trees of different species respond to nutrient availability; and thirdly, to unravel how the relationships between resources and plant chemistry affect herbivory. We established a network of 25 study sites covering important abiotic gradients, including temperature, precipitation, and geology. Employing a hierarchical modelling approach, we assessed the influence of climate and geology on resource availability for plants, primarily in the form of soil nutrients. Then, we explored the influence of the above factors on the interaction between herbivory and foliage chemistry across three widespread rainforest tree species, comparing how these relationships emerged across genera. Our findings suggest an overarching influence of climate and geology over soil chemistry, foliar nitrogen, and insect herbivory, both directly and indirectly. However, individual constituents of soil fertility showed equivocal influences on spatial patterns of foliage chemistry once site geological origin was accounted for, suggesting a questionable relationship between individual soil nutrients and foliar composition. We have demonstrated that herbivore–plant interactions are complex dynamics regulated by an intricate web of relationships spanning different biogeochemical processes. While our results provide some support to the notion that herbivory is affected by resource availability, different species growing under the same conditions can show differing responses to the same resources, highlighting the importance of identifying specific limiting factors rather than simpler proxies of resource availability.

Item ID:	85162
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1432-1939
Copyright Information:	Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Date Deposited:	22 Apr 2025 00:44
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310308 Terrestrial ecology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 100%
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