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Impacts of Climatic Variability and Hurricanes on Caterpillar Diet Breadth and Plant-Herbivore Interaction Networks

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Caterpillars in the Middle

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Abstract

Climatic variability and meteorological extreme events are known to impact insect and plant populations, ecological processes, and ecosystem services. Available evidence suggests that variations in temperature and precipitation and extreme events such as hurricanes or acute droughts can affect nutrient cycling, species abundance and composition of biodiverse insect communities, the strength of species interactions, and the resilience of their networks. However, there is little information on how insects can respond and adapt to such environmental challenges, for example, by modifying their feeding habits and diet breadth, and thus their degree of specialization. In this chapter, we describe how the most abundant oligotrophic caterpillars of a tropical dry forest show variability in their diet breadths in an 11-year study period, as a function of interannual variation in climatic variables and the incidence of two hurricanes, influencing in turn the parameters of plant-herbivore interaction networks. We report that lepidopteran diet breadth was variable across years, and this variation is partially related to some climatic factors such the coefficient of variation in maximum temperature, variation in annual rainfall, and the duration of the preceding dry season. Plant-herbivore network parameters were affected by the same climatic variables, negatively influencing network size, specialization, and the number of compartments, while it positively affects the number of links per species. In addition, years with high variation in precipitation during the rainy season with high precipitation events promoted larger and more specialized networks. Regarding the impact of extreme meteorological events, herbivore’s diet breadth increased after the stroke of two hurricanes, increasing the number of links per species and network connectivity. In contrast, plant-herbivore network size, their specialization degree, and the number of compartments were negatively affected by these extreme events. Understanding the relationship between climatic variability and caterpillar diet breadth leads to open questions on the evolution of herbivore foraging behavior and phenotypic plasticity in plant host use and plant-herbivore network topology, influenced by climate and land use changes.

figure a

Caterpillars of Syssphinx sp. (Saturniidae) (photo by Antonio López-Carretero, above); undetermined species of Aididae (photo by Juan Pablo Martinez, below)

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank I. Medina, C. Manrique, F. Gutierrez, E. Castro, L. Solis, A. Flores, N. Luviano, E. Cuevas, B. Mejía, I. Sosa, W. Mendoza, A. López-Carretero, and the students of the biotic interactions ecology laboratory at IIES-UNAM for fieldwork assistance. Special thanks to R. Pérez-Ishiwara for logistical support. We also thank the landowners, UNAM Chamela Biological Station, and the Cuixmala Foundation for kindly allowing access to their proprieties and M. Martínez-Ramos for allowing the incorporation of our study to the MABOTRO original design. This study was funded by PAPIIT-UNAM (IN208610, IN217507, IN211916, IN207016), by CONACyT, Mexico (Red Temática del Código de Barras de la Vida; Proyecto SEP-CB No. 220454), and by SEP CONACyT 2015 255544. Permission to collect larva and adult lepidopteran and plant specimens was given by the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SGPA/DGVS/02005/08).

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  1. Authors Karina Boege and Ek del-Val contributed equally in this chapter.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Karina Boege & Jazmin Zetina

  2. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico

    Ivonne P. Delgado & Ek del-Val

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  1. Karina Boege
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Correspondence to Ek del-Val .

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  1. Department of Biology, Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St Louis, MO, USA

    Robert J. Marquis

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, International Center for Tropical Botany, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Suzanne Koptur

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Boege, K., Delgado, I.P., Zetina, J., del-Val, E. (2022). Impacts of Climatic Variability and Hurricanes on Caterpillar Diet Breadth and Plant-Herbivore Interaction Networks. In: Marquis, R.J., Koptur, S. (eds) Caterpillars in the Middle. Fascinating Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86688-4_18

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