What’s bugging you? Long-Term Impacts of Warming & Insect Herbivory on Plant Communities

by Caleb Hess, Michigan State University
October 8, 2024

In a new paper appearing in the journal Ecology, Michigan State University ecologists explore the impacts of warming temperatures and insect herbivory on plants’ biological cycles.

Research from the Spatial & Community Ecology Lab (SpaCE Lab) at MSU examines how biodiversity may be affected by the cascading effects of climate change, as warming temperatures set into motion complex and subtle shifts in ecosystem dynamics.

For example, shifts in temperature and weather patterns may alter when plants bloom and influence the size of an emerging brood of insects. But the ways in which these changes might compound and exacerbate ecosystem challenges are still under investigation.

Graduate students Moriah Young and Kara Dobson, from MSU’s Department of Integrative Biology and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (EEB) Program, led this seven-year-long project that seeks to uncover how such interactions could develop.

Across two sites — one at MSU’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research Site (KBS-LTER) and the other at the University of Michigan Biological Station — the team examined both the combined and discrete impacts of warming and leaf herbivory on plant communities.

Some plots were treated with insecticide to deter herbivory. Then, a series of open-top chambers — designed to raise a plot’s ambient temperature — were installed. This combination of treatments provided plots with various degrees of warming and insect herbivory.

Among the factors examined over the next several years by the authors were plant-specific traits, including seed and flower development, and community traits, such as plant biomass and species richness.

They found that as temperatures increased, plants demonstrated a tendency to grow earlier in the year than under non-warmed conditions, but only with added pressure from insect herbivory.

Keep reading: https://integrativebiology.natsci.msu.edu/news/102024_Zarnetske_Herbivory.aspx

Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4441