How do the effects of herbivory and light gradients impact the overall plant fitness within different environments?
Abstract
The strength of natural selection on phenotypic traits as a result of herbivory can be measured within and among environments by quantifying spatial variation in fitness and herbivory levels in the different environments. High spatial variation among different light gradients can be expected to cause higher directional selection favoring habitat differentiation (local adaptation) among environments. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that light quality habitats influence fitness indirectly through variationin herbivory among habitats. I measured a suite of plant traits across a light quality gradient using the plant bittercress as a model. Plants were measured across 18 phenotypic traits. The correlation between fruit/seed number in response to leaves mined, leaf area mined, sum of leaf mined is expected to have negative correlation when herbivory is high. The results indicate that there is a negative correlation between herbivory between seeds per plant (reference figure 6). Secondly, that there is no significant difference between sun and shade as a factor of herbivory but willow shade ecotone had the least amount of herbivory.
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