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Wet years have more caterpillars: interacting roles of plant litter and predation by ants
- Source :
- Karban, R; Grof-Tisza, P; & Holyoak, M. (2017). Wet years have more caterpillars: interacting roles of plant litter and predation by ants. Ecology, 98(9), 2370-2378. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1917. UC Davis: Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2z57925f, Ecology, vol 98, iss 9, Karban, Richard; Grof-Tisza, Patrick; & Holyoak, Marcel. (2017). Wet years have more caterpillars: interacting roles of plant litter and predation by ants. Ecology, 98(9), 2370-2378. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1917. UC Office of the President: Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI); a funding opportunity through UC Research Initiatives (UCRI). Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2kx7b4rg
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2017.
-
Abstract
- © 2017 by the Ecological Society of America Climate is widely recognized as an important factor that affects temporal and spatial patterns of occurrence and abundance of herbivorous insects, although the ecological mechanisms responsible are poorly understood. We found that precipitation and standing water were positively correlated with locations and years of high abundance of caterpillars of the ranchman's tiger moth, Platyprepia virginalis. We analyzed 30 years of survey data and found that the number of large rainfall events was a better predictor of caterpillar abundance than total annual accumulation. We considered three ecological mechanisms that could drive this relationship and conducted observations and manipulative experiments to evaluate these mechanisms. (1) Rainfall facilitates more plant growth, although we found no evidence that increased food quality or quantity was causing the positive association between precipitation and caterpillar abundance. (2) Large rainfall events cause predatory ground-nesting ants to be less abundant and we found that the number of ants that recruited to local sites was negatively associated with survival and abundance of caterpillars. (3) We found that litter from wet sites provided a refuge from ant predation; litter from wet sites was not beneficial to caterpillars in the absence of ants. Both abiotic factors (precipitation) and biotic factors (predatory ants) affected the temporal and spatial abundance of caterpillars directly and interactively. Climate models predict that rainfall will become more variable, suggesting that populations of this caterpillar may also become more variable in the future.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Rain
Population
herbivore
population
precipitation
Biology
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Predation
Abundance (ecology)
Animals
Herbivory
education
Caterpillar
Ecosystem
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Abiotic component
Evolutionary Biology
Herbivore
education.field_of_study
Biotic component
Ecology
variability
Ants
fungi
Life Sciences
Plants
Plant litter
biology.organism_classification
Climate Action
Lepidoptera
climate change
Ecological Applications
Larva
Predatory Behavior
refuge
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19399170 and 00129658
- Volume :
- 98
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Ecology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f7d26b525db154652391d11bdbfe89d4