Tolerance to herbivory in woody vs. herbaceous plants |
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Authors: | Erkki Haukioja Julia Koricheva |
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Institution: | (1) Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland |
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Abstract: | Research on plant tolerance to herbivory has been so far largely focussed on herbaceous plants partly due to the implicit
assumption that woody plants are inherently lower in their compensatory potential as compared to herbs. However, tolerance
to herbivory should be an important part of resistance of woody plants because their apparency to herbivory is high due to
a large size and long life span, and their defence systems cannot completely exclude herbivory. Moreover, the longer life
span, more complex modularity and higher sectorality of woody plants as compared to herbs imply that compensatory responses
in woody plants may take several years to develop, and that consequences of herbivore damage to individual modules may profoundly
differ from whole-plant responses. Therefore, short-term studies using branches or ramets as experimental units are likely
to underestimate the tolerance of woody plants to herbivory. In addition, defoliation by insects (the most common type of
herbivory experienced by woody plants) is less likely to release apical dominance and trigger biomass compensation than mammalian
grazing on herbaceous plants. We conclude, therefore, that the seemingly different recovery potentials exhibited by woody
and herbaceous plants are more likely to be the consequences of differences between the two types of plants in modular architecture,
longevity and the type of herbivory they commonly experience rather than indications of inherent differences in compensatory
ability.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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Keywords: | folivory longevity modularity mountain birch overcompensation regrowth |
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