Abstract
The way in which herbivorous insect individuals use multiple host species is difficult to quantify under field conditions, but critical to understanding the evolutionary processes underpinning insect–host plant relationships. In this study we developed a novel approach to understanding the host plant interactions of the green mirid, Creontiades dilutus, a highly motile heteropteran bug that has been associated with many plant species. We combine quantified sampling of the insect across its various host plant species within particular sites and a molecular comparison between the insects' gut contents and available host plants. This approach allows inferences to be made as to the plants fed upon by individual insects in the field. Quantified sampling shows that this “generalist” species is consistently more abundant on two species in the genus Cullen (Fabaceae), its primary host species, than on any other of its numerous listed hosts. The chloroplast intergenic sequences reveal that C. dilutus frequently feeds on plants additional to the one from which it was collected, even when individuals were sampled from the primary host species. These data may be reconciled by viewing multiple host use in this species as an adaptation to survive spatiotemporally ephemeral habitats. The methodological framework developed here provides a basis from which new insights into the feeding behaviour and host plant relationships of herbivorous insects can be derived, which will benefit not only ecological interpretation but also our understanding of the evolution of these relationships.
Highlights
A clear understanding of the behaviour of individual insects is crucial to interpreting many ecological and evolutionary phenomena, for it informs about the extent and limits of variation within a population and about differences between populations or species
When hosts that have no record of C. dilutus nymphal presence are removed (54% of the total), this list is reduced to 45 host plant species across 15 families, but primarily Fabaceae (42% of those host species with nymphs recorded) and to some extent Asteraceae, with 16% (Fig. 2)
To explore the host plant relationships of this highly motile insect, with a broad reported host range, we developed a framework that integrates quantified spatial host plant sampling with molecular analyses of recent plant food intake
Summary
A clear understanding of the behaviour of individual insects is crucial to interpreting many ecological and evolutionary phenomena, for it informs about the extent and limits of variation within a population (or species) and about differences between populations or species. Laboratory studies of host plant use do provide insight into how individuals use host plants of alternative species, they suffer several compounding limitations, including the difficulty of incorporating and testing long range host searching mechanisms, the exclusion of environmental influences, and the difficulty of reconciling behaviour observed in the laboratory with that observed in the field [1]. In this paper we elucidate the feeding behaviour of individual green mirids (Creontiades dilutus), a species of bug recorded from multiple host plants, under natural conditions. This required that a methodological approach be developed, based on a combination of structured sampling in the field and gut content analysis, as expanded below
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