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Background Insect Herbivory: Impacts, Patterns and Methodology

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Book cover Progress in Botany Vol. 79

Part of the book series: Progress in Botany ((BOTANY,volume 79))

Abstract

Plants provide humans with oxygen, food, fibre and fuel, but their effectiveness in performing these roles is affected by herbivores. Historically, studies on insect herbivory have primarily addressed pest outbreaks, which have indisputable ecological and economic consequences. By contrast, less attention has been paid to background (‘normal’) insect herbivory (BIH), which inflicts minor damage but acts on plants continuously. In this review, we introduce BIH as a phenomenon of great ecological and evolutionary importance, summarize the current knowledge regarding the levels and patterns of BIH and the effects of BIH on individual plants, plant communities and ecosystem-level processes, and discuss the methodology of studies addressing BIH. In the long term, global terrestrial net primary production (NPP) is more strongly affected by BIH than by the outbreaks of eruptive insect species. Plant responses to BIH differ from their responses to severe damage, and abiotic drivers of global change may have different effects on background versus outbreak herbivory. Minor changes in BIH caused by human activities may have profound but imperfectly understood consequences for the structure and functions of terrestrial ecosystems. This justifies the urgent need to move the focus away from rare bouts of severe plant damage by insects to the ubiquitous phenomenon of BIH in ecosystem-level studies and away from episodic major damage to chronic minor damage in studies of plant–herbivore interactions.

Communicated by Rainer Matyssek

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the Academy of Finland (projects 122133, 268124, 276671 and 311929). We thank V. Zverev for providing a photograph and R. Matyssek and an anonymous reviewer for inspiring comments to an earlier draft of the manuscript.

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  1. Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Mikhail V. Kozlov & Elena L. Zvereva

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  1. Mikhail V. Kozlov
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  2. Elena L. Zvereva
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Correspondence to Mikhail V. Kozlov .

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  1. Depto. Biología Molecular y Bioquímica, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Francisco M. Cánovas

  2. Department of Biology, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Ulrich Lüttge

  3. Ecophysiology of Plants, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universität München LS, Ökophysiologie der Pflanzen, Freising, Bayern, Germany

    Rainer Matyssek

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Kozlov, M.V., Zvereva, E.L. (2017). Background Insect Herbivory: Impacts, Patterns and Methodology. In: Cánovas, F., Lüttge, U., Matyssek, R. (eds) Progress in Botany Vol. 79. Progress in Botany, vol 79. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/124_2017_4

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