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    Correlations between physical and chemical defences in plants: tradeoffs, syndromes, or just many different ways to skin a herbivorous cat?

    Access Status
    Open access via publisher
    Authors
    Moles, A.
    Peco, B.
    Wallis, I.
    Foley, W.
    Poore, A.
    Seabloom, E.
    Vesk, P.
    Bisigato, A.
    Cella-Pizarro, L.
    Clark, C.
    Cohen, P.
    Cornwell, W.
    Edwards, W.
    Ejrnaes, R.
    Gonzalez-Ojeda, T.
    Graae, B.
    Hay, G.
    Lumbwe, F.
    Magana-Rodriquez, B.
    Moore, B.
    Peri, P.
    Poulsen, J.
    Stegen, J.
    Veldtman, R.
    Zeipel, H.
    Andrew, N.
    Boulter, S.
    Borer, E.
    Cornelissen, J.
    Farji-Brener, A.
    DeGabriel, J.
    Jurado, E.
    Kyhn, L.
    Mulder, C.
    Low, B.
    Reardon-Smith, K.
    Rodriguez-Velazquez, J.
    Fortier, A.
    Zheng, Z.
    Blendinger, P.
    Enquist, B.
    Facelli, J.
    Knight, T.
    Majer, Jonathan
    Martinez-Ramos, M.
    McQuillan, P.
    Hui, F.
    Date
    2013
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Moles, A. and Peco, B. and Wallis, I. and Foley, W. and Poore, A. and Seabloom, E. and Vesk, P. et al. 2013. Correlations between physical and chemical defences in plants: tradeoffs, syndromes, or just many different ways to skin a herbivorous cat?. New Phytologist. 198: pp. 252-263.
    Source Title
    New Phytologist
    DOI
    10.1111/nph.12116
    ISSN
    1469-8137
    School
    Department of Environment and Agriculture
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/6947
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    Most plant species have a range of traits that deter herbivores. However, understanding of how different defences are related to one another is surprisingly weak. Many authors argue that defence traits trade off against one another, while others argue that they form coordinated defence syndromes. We collected a dataset of unprecedented taxonomic and geographic scope (261 species spanning 80 families, from 75 sites across the globe) to investigate relationships among four chemical and six physical defences. Five of the 45 pairwise correlations between defence traits were significant and three of these were tradeoffs. The relationship between species’ overall chemical and physical defence levels was marginally nonsignificant (P = 0.08), and remained nonsignificant after accounting for phylogeny, growth form and abundance. Neither categorical principal component analysis (PCA) nor hierarchical cluster analysis supported the idea that species displayed defence syndromes. Our results do not support arguments for tradeoffs or for coordinated defence syndromes. Rather, plants display a range of combinations of defence traits. We suggest this lack of consistent defence syndromes may be adaptive, resulting from selective pressure to deploy a different combination of defences to coexisting species.

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