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Trade-off between seed defensive traits and impacts on interaction patterns between seeds and rodents in forest ecosystems

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Abstract

Plants often have two kinds of defensive traits against animal predation: physical and chemical defenses, but the trade-off between them is heavily debated, and their impacts on relationship between plants and animals are largely unknown. We investigated seed traits of 23 tree species and their impacts on seed fates or hoarding behaviors under predation from 16 rodent species in four forest types in China. We provide clear evidence that there is a strong nonlinear trade-off between physical (as measured by seed coat thickness) and chemical (as measured by tannin content) defensive traits in seeds. This trade-off was closely associated with nutritional traits, resulting in coordinated defense syndromes in seeds. The seed fate and hoarding behavior patterns were largely determined by the trade-off-related seed traits and the body mass of rodents, respectively, not by the phylogenetic relations of species. Tree species showed more conservative evolution in seed traits of high starch content, high tannin content, and thin seed coat, but they showed more convergent/divergent evolution in seed traits of high protein content, high fat content, and thick seed coat under rodent predation. Our results suggest that trade-off-related seed traits may play a predominant role in shaping the relationship between plants and animals.

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Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB11050300), the grants of National Natural Science Foundation of China (30930016, 31330013, 31372212), the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSZD-EW-TZ-008; CXTDS2005-4), and the National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB109101; 2012CB955504). We are grateful to Prof. Marcel Holyoak, University of California, for his valuable comments to this manuscript. We thank Mr. Yunfa Xiao and Xunlong Wang for the field assistances in rodent capture in Dujiangyan region.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management on Pest Insect and Rodent in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 Beichen Xilu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China

    Zhibin Zhang, Zhenyu Wang, Zhishu Xiao, Fusheng Wang, Hongjun Li & Chuan Yan

  2. College of Life Sciences, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, 330022, China

    Zhenyu Wang & Xianfeng Yi

  3. Shanxi Institute of Zoology, Xi’an, 710032, China

    Gang Chang

  4. Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Jiqi Lu

  5. Molecular and Behavioural Research Group, College of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Hongmao Zhang

  6. Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, Yunnan, China

    Lin Cao

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  1. Zhibin Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhibin Zhang.

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Zhang, Z., Wang, Z., Chang, G. et al. Trade-off between seed defensive traits and impacts on interaction patterns between seeds and rodents in forest ecosystems. Plant Ecol 217, 253–265 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-016-0566-0

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