Host insect specificity and interspecific competition drive parasitoid diversification in a plant–insect community

Ecological interactions among plants, insect herbivores, and parasitoids are pervasive in nature and play important roles in community assembling, but the codiversification of tri‐trophic interactions has received less attention. Here we compare pairwise codiversification patterns between a set of 2...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2023-07, Vol.104 (7), p.e4062-n/a
Main Authors: Wang, Ai‐Ying, Peng, Yan‐Qiong, Cook, James M., Yang, Da‐Rong, Zhang, Da‐Yong, Liao, Wan‐Jin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
codiversification
Competition
Congruences
Ecology
fig
fig parasitoid wasp
Herbivores
Host plants
Host Specificity
host switching
Host-Parasite Interactions
Insect ecology
Insects
Interspecific
interspecific competition
Parasitoids
Phylogeny
Plant communities
Plants
Pollinators
Resource availability
Speciation
tri‐trophic community
Trophic levels
Trophic relationships
Wasps
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Summary:Ecological interactions among plants, insect herbivores, and parasitoids are pervasive in nature and play important roles in community assembling, but the codiversification of tri‐trophic interactions has received less attention. Here we compare pairwise codiversification patterns between a set of 22 fig species, their herbivorous pollinating and galling wasps, and their parasitoids. The parasitoid phylogeny showed significant congruence and more cospeciation events with host insects phylogeny than with host plants. These results suggest that parasitoid phylogeny and speciation is more closely related to their host insects than to their host plants. The pollinating wasps hosted more parasitoid species than gallers and indicated a more intense interspecific competition among parasitoids associated with pollinators. Closer matching and fewer evolutionary host shifts were found between parasitoids and galler hosts than between parasitoids and pollinator hosts. These results suggest that interspecific competition among parasitoids, rather than resource availability of host wasps, is the main driver of the codiversification pattern in this community. Therefore, our study highlights the important role of interspecific competition among high trophic level insects in plant–insect tri‐trophic community assembling.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1002/ecy.4062