Experimental evidence for apparent competition in a tropical forest food web
Experimental evidence for apparent competition in a tropical forest food web
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DOI：
10.1038/nature02394
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发表时间：
2004-03-18
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Godfray, HCJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Morris, RJ;Lewis, OT;Godfray, HCJ
热带森林中的食草昆虫构成了生物体中最多样化的群落。由于这个原因，很难发现这些社区的结构化程度，以及通过什么过程。种间资源竞争确实存在，但其当代重要性有限，因为大多数潜在竞争昆虫以不同的宿主植物为食（2）。物种之间相互作用的另一种方式是通过共同的天敌，这一过程称为明显的竞争（3）。尽管有广泛的理论讨论，有几个明显的竞争领域的示范，并没有在超多样化的热带社区。在这里，我们实验性地从热带森林中的采叶昆虫群落中去除了两种草食动物。我们预测，其他物种，共享天敌与两个删除的物种将经历较低的寄生率，并有较高的人口密度相比，控制网站。在这两种情况下（去除双翅目和鞘翅目潜叶虫物种），我们发现寄生率显着降低，在一种情况下（去除双翅目），我们发现显着较高的丰度一年后的操作。我们的研究结果表明，明显的竞争可能是重要的热带昆虫群落结构。
The herbivorous insects of tropical forests constitute some of the most diverse communities of living organisms(1). For this reason it has been difficult to discover the degree to which these communities are structured, and by what processes. Interspecific competition for resources does occur, but its contemporary importance is limited because most pairs of potentially competing insects feed on different host plants(2). An alternative way in which species can interact is through shared natural enemies, a process called apparent competition(3). Despite extensive theoretical discussion there are few field demonstrations of apparent competition, and none in hyper-diverse tropical communities. Here, we experimentally removed two species of herbivore from a community of leaf-mining insects in a tropical forest. We predicted that other species that share natural enemies with the two removed species would experience lower parasitism and have higher population densities in treatment compared with control sites. In both cases ( on removal of a dipteran and a coleopteran leaf-miner species) we found significantly lower parasitism, and in one case ( removal of the dipteran) we found significantly higher abundance a year after the manipulation. Our results suggest that apparent competition may be important in structuring tropical insect communities.