Effects of Plant Diversity on Selection for Insect Resistance Traits in <i>Boechera stricta</i>

Abstract

Evolution by natural selection is influenced by an organism’s environment. Biodiversity, an aspect of the biotic environment, is rapidly changing due to anthropogenic activity, so its impacts on selection must be better understood. In this study, the effects of diversity on selection for an insect resistance gene and trait were studied in Boechera stricta. In naturally-occurring B. stricta, abundances of morphospecies in 1x1-meter plots containing the focal species were recorded. Damage and fitness data were also collected. Fitness was shown to decrease significantly across damage, confirming the theoretical basis of the study and allowing damage to proxy fitness, though this was not the case in a model that considered phenological stage as a covariate. Richness was shown to predict damage with marginal significance (p =0.0614), but a Shannon-Weaver Index and Simpson Index analysis yielded no meaningful results. A principal components analysis (PCA) allowed researchers to identify species that correlated most strongly with the third PCA axis, which significantly predicted damage. 3 of those top 5 species abundances significantly correlated positively with damage directly, without the PCA axis as an intermediate. These results show the importance of community composition, which accounts for species identity, in insect damage. It also points to the importance of low-density, low-abundance species, which may not create a strong signal in indices like Simpson, but which affect richness more strongly, and some of which were shown to influence damage through the PCA. Further study is certainly necessary to understand which sorts of species might be most important in influencing damage and the extent of their potential influence. Simha 3

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