Abstract
The community of insect herbivores on individual host trees may depend on the history of the hosts—from ongoing ontogeny via recent microevolution to ancient phylogeny—but the relative importance of these scales remains unknown. We sampled spring caterpillars, leaf mines, and leaf galls from sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) in a forest in western Poland. We assessed the effect of individual tree neighborhood, tree size, and budburst phenology, as well as genetic traits on insect herbivore diversity and community composition. Overall, our results show that different scales of history act simultaneously and do so differently in different functional groups.
Supplementary Materials
The presentation material can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/IECD2022-12360/s1.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, F.M., A.P. and U.W.; methodology, F.M., I.M. and U.W.; formal analysis, F.M.; data curation, F.M.; writing—original draft preparation, F.M.; funding acquisition, F.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
Grant No. 2018/29/B/NZ8/00112 National Science Centre (Poland).
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Data on acterpillars are included in DOI: 10.3390/insects13040367, others unpublished.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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