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Originally published in Science Express on 13 July 2006
Science 25 August 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5790, pp. 1115 - 1118
DOI: 10.1126/science.1129237
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Reports

Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests?

Vojtech Novotny,1* Pavel Drozd,2 Scott E. Miller,3 Miroslav Kulfan,4 Milan Janda,1 Yves Basset,5 George D. Weiblen6

Despite recent progress in understanding mechanisms of tree species coexistence in tropical forests, a simple explanation for the even more extensive diversity of insects feeding on these plants has been missing. We compared folivorous insects from temperate and tropical trees to test the hypothesis that herbivore species coexistence in more diverse communities could reflect narrow host specificity relative to less diverse communities. Temperate and tropical tree species of comparable phylogenetic distribution supported similar numbers of folivorous insect species, 29.0 ± 2.2 and 23.5 ± 1.8 per 100 square meters of foliage, respectively. Host specificity did not differ significantly between community samples, indicating that food resources are not more finely partitioned among folivorous insects in tropical than in temperate forests. These findings suggest that the latitudinal gradient in insect species richness could be a direct function of plant diversity, which increased sevenfold from our temperate to tropical study sites.

1 Institute of Entomology, Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Zoology, University of South Bohemia, Branisovska 31, 370 05 Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic.
2 Department of Biology, University of Ostrava, Chittussiho 10, 710 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic.
3 National Museum of Natural History and National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013–7012, USA.
4 Department of Zoology, Comenius University, Mlynska dolina B-1, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovakia.
5 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancon, Panama.
6 Department of Plant Biology and Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota, 220 Biological Sciences Center, 1445 Gortner Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108–1095, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: novotny{at}entu.cas.cz

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