The top-down and indirect effects of insects on plant communities depend on patterns of host use, which are often poorly documented, particularly in species-rich tropical forests. At Barro Colorado Island, Panama, we compiled the first food web quantifying trophic interactions between the majority of co-occurring woody plant species and their internally feeding insect seed predators. Our study is based on more than 200 000 fruits representing 478 plant species, associated with 369 insect species. Insect host-specificity was remarkably high: only 20% of seed predator species were associated with more than one plant species, while each tree species experienced seed predation from a median of two insect species. Phylogeny, but not plant traits, explained patterns of seed predator attack. These data suggest that seed predators are unlikely to mediate indirect interactions such as apparent competition between plant species, but are consistent with their proposed contribution to maintaining plant diversity via the Janzen-Connell mechanism.

Biodiversity Unit University of Turku Turku Finland

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Entomology Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

Biology Department University of San Diego San Diego CA USA

Department of Chemistry University of Turku Turku Finland

Department of Ecology Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Uppsala Sweden

Department of Entomology Michigan State University East Lansing MI USA

Department of Zoology University of Oxford Oxford UK

Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

ForestGEO Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Balboa Republic of Panama

Integrative Ecology Laboratory Department of Biology Faculty of Science Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand

Maestria de Entomologia Universidad de Panamá Panama Republic of Panama

National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC USA

School of Biological Sciences University of Reading Reading UK

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Balboa Republic of Panama

Zobrazit více v PubMed

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