Abstract
What happens when an exotic herbivore invades and encounters novel host plants and enemies? Here, we investigate the impacts of host plant quality and plant architecture on an exotic generalist herbivore, Epiphyas postvittana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) and its interactions with resident parasitoids in California. Using artificial diet and five plant species, we found significant effects of diet on the fitness of E. postvittana under laboratory conditions. In the field, based on a common garden experiment with host plants of nine species, we found that larval parasitism varied among plant species by a factor of 2.1 with a higher risk of parasitism on shorter than taller plants. Parasitism of egg masses varied by a factor of 4.7 among plant species with a higher risk of parasitism on taller than shorter plants. In the laboratory, the foraging time of a resident egg parasitoid on excised leaves varied among plant species, but did not correspond to observed egg parasitism rates on these same plants in the field. On leaves of Plantago lanceolata, the probability of egg parasitism decreased with trichome density. Overall, there was a significant effect of host plant on the intrinsic rate of increase of E. postvittana and on the extent of parasitism by resident parasitoids, but no correlation existed between these two effects. The recent decline of E. postvittana in California may be due to the low quality of some host plants and to the many resident enemies that readily attack it, perhaps due to its phylogenetic relatedness to resident tortricids.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by grants from USDA-APHIS, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and a Van den Bosch Fellowship. We thank Steve Prinzivalli from Earth Networks-WeatherBug for access to climate data, Lisa Fernandez and Lauren Ponisio for statistical advice, Wayne Sousa and two anonymous reviewers for edits, the greenhouse staff for plant maintenance, and Aditi Dubi, Ahsan Mohammadi, Anna Mealy, Aryn Moore, Christina Lew, Cristina Cois, Ervin Herrera, Janice Oh, Jillian Keller, Gerid Ollison, Jonathon Trejo, Kevin Kai, Michael Fu, Priscilla Yung, Nina Nim, Nina Wani, Scott Kaplan and Somanette Rivas for their assistance with the experiments.
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J.H. and N.M. initiated the study; J.H. acquired the data; led the analysis; the writing and presentation. J.H. and N.M. edited the manuscript.
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Communicated by Carlos L. Ballare.
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Hopper, J.V., Mills, N.J. Novel multitrophic interactions among an exotic, generalist herbivore, its host plants and resident enemies in California. Oecologia 182, 1117–1128 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3722-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3722-2