TY - JOUR T1 - Habitat preference of an herbivore shapes the habitat distribution of its host plant JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/156240 SP - 156240 AU - Nicolas M. Alexandre AU - Parris T. Humphrey AU - Joseph Frazier AU - Andrew D. Gloss AU - Jimmy Lee AU - Henry A. Affeldt III AU - Noah K. Whiteman Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/28/156240.abstract N2 - Habitat distributions of plants are often driven by abiotic factors, but growing evidence suggests an important role for consumers. A textbook example of consumers limiting the habitat distribution of a plant is in bittercress (Cardamine cordifolia). Bittercress is more abundant in shade than in sun habitats, and this is thought to arise because herbivore pressure is lower in the shade. Yet we still do not understand why herbivory is lower in the shade. Herbivores may avoid shaded bittercress because the plants are lower quality, or because herbivores simply prefer brighter, warmer habitats. We tested these alternative hypotheses through a series of herbivore choice experiments. Scaptomyza nigrita, a locally abundant specialist and dominant herbivore of bittercress, strongly preferred feeding and laying eggs on bittercress we collected from shade versus sun habitats. Thus, shaded bittercress are more, not less, palatable to these herbivores. Separately, S. nigrita strongly preferred feeding and laying eggs on leaves held in treatments that simulated sun rather than shade habitats—regardless of whether leaves came from sun or shade habitats originally. The underlying mechanism for an herbivore-driven plant distribution appears to be a simple behavioral preference of herbivores for brighter, warmer habitats.Author contributions NMA, ADG, JL, HAA, and NKW designed the experiments; NMA, ADG, JL, HAA, and JF collected the data; PTH and NMA analyzed the data; NMA, PTH and NKW wrote the paper. All authors contributed to editing the submission.Data accessibility All data will be deposited in the Dryad data repository (doi pending). ER -