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Environmental gradients and herbivore feeding preferences in coastal salt marshes

  • Plant Animal Interactions
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Abstract

Current theories of plant-herbivore interactions suggest that plants may differ in palatability to herbivores as a function of abiotic stress; however, studies of these theories have produced mixed results. We compared the palatability of eight common salt marsh plants that occur across elevational and salinity stress gradients to six common leaf-chewing herbivores to determine patterns of plant palatability. The palatability of every plant species varied across gradients of abiotic stress in at least one comparison, and over half of the comparisons indicated significant differences in palatability. The direction of the preferences, however, was dependent on the plant and herbivore species studied, suggesting that different types of stress affect plants in different ways, that different plant species respond differently to stress, and that different herbivore species measure plant quality in different ways. Overall, 51% of the variation in the strength of the feeding preferences could be explained by a knowledge of the strength of the stress gradient and the type of gradient, plant and herbivore studied. This suggests that the prospects are good for a more complex, conditional theory of plant stress and herbivore feeding preferences that is based on a mechanistic understanding of plant physiology and the factors underlying herbivore feeding preferences.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Mia Dixon and Tracy Buck for help in the laboratory and field, and Brian Silliman, Erin Siska and two anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript. We thank the University of Georgia Marine Institute Intern Program (Goranson), the Environmental Institute of Houston, and NSF (GCE-LTER program, OCE99–82133) for funding. This is contribution no. 935 from the University of Georgia Marine Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Warnell School of Forest Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Carol E. Goranson

  2. Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Chuan-Kai Ho & Steven C. Pennings

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  1. Carol E. Goranson
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  2. Chuan-Kai Ho
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  3. Steven C. Pennings
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Correspondence to Steven C. Pennings.

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Goranson, C.E., Ho, CK. & Pennings, S.C. Environmental gradients and herbivore feeding preferences in coastal salt marshes. Oecologia 140, 591–600 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-004-1615-2

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