Abstract
Phenotypic changes in plants during domestication may disrupt plant–herbivore interactions. Because wild and cultivated plants have different habitats and some anti-herbivore defences exhibit some plasticity, their defences may be also influenced by the environment. Our goal was to assess the effects of domestication and the environment on herbivory and some anti-herbivore defences in chaya (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius) in its centre of domestication. Herbivores, herbivory, and direct and indirect anti-herbivore defences were assessed in wild and cultivated plants. The same variables were measured in the field and in a common garden to assess environmental effects. Our results show that domestication increased herbivory and herbivore abundance, but reduced direct and some indirect defences (ants). The environment also affected the herbivore guild (herbivore abundance and richness) and some direct and indirect defences (trichome number and ants). There was also an interaction effect of domestication and the environment on the number of trichomes. We conclude that domestication and the environment influence herbivory and anti-herbivore defences in an additive and interactive manner in chaya.
Highlights
Domestication is the outcome of artificial selection that leads to the increased co-evolutionary adaptation of plants to cultivation and their utilization by humans (Gepts 2010)
Herbivore abundance per plant was 3.17 times greater on cultivated (58.47 ± 20.96) than on wild plants (18.42 ± 4.96) (χ21 = 784, P < 0.01), and 6.48 times more herbivores were found in the field (61 ± 18.21) than in the common garden (9.41 ± 2.37; χ21 = 457, P < 0.01)
In this study we assessed the interplay of domestication per se and environmental effects on the herbivory, and direct and indirect anti-herbivory defences of a crop species (C. aconitifolius) in its domestication centre
Summary
Domestication is the outcome of artificial selection that leads to the increased co-evolutionary adaptation of plants to cultivation and their utilization by humans (Gepts 2010). The authors suggested that this was probably because several of the studies they revised were not designed to test for the effect of domestication on herbivore resistance or defence and, in some cases, wild and cultivated plants were exposed to completely different environments (Whitehead et al 2017). The latter should be controlled to separate the effect of domestication per se from environmentally induced variation. An approach that combines field data and common garden experiments is useful for separating domestication per se from environmental effects
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