PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Daan Mertens
AU  - Klaas Bouwmeester
AU  - Erik H. Poelman
TI  - Variation in insect herbivore communities on individual plants reveals phylogenetic signal in uncertainty of attack in Brassicaceae
AID  - 10.1101/2020.12.06.413724
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.12.06.413724
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/07/2020.12.06.413724.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/07/2020.12.06.413724.full
AB  - As a result of co-evolution between plants and herbivores, related plants often interact with similar communities of herbivores. On individual plants, typically only a subset of interactions is realized. The stochasticity of realized interactions leads to uncertainty of attack on individual plants and is likely to determine adaptiveness of plant defence strategies. Here, we show that across 12 plant species in two phylogenetic lineages of the Brassicaceae, variation in realized herbivore communities reveals a phylogenetic signal in the uncertainty of attack on individual plants. Individual plants of Brassicaceae Lineage II were attacked by a larger number of herbivore species from a larger species pool, resulting in a higher uncertainty of realized antagonistic interactions compared to plants in Lineage I. We argue that uncertainty of attack in terms of realized interactions on individual plants is ecologically relevant and must therefore be considered in the evolution of plant defences.