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#herbivory

4 public questions tagged with this topic.

SPECIES INTERACTION

Plants avoiding herbivory by association with unpalatable neighbors is:

Associational resistance occurs when a plant suffers less herbivory because of the identity, abundance, or arrangement of neighboring plants. An unpalatable or chemically defended neighbor may mask host odors, visually conceal the focal plant, repel herbivores, reduce landing probability, or support predators and parasitoids that attack herbivores. The protected plant need not possess the neighbor’s defensive compound; reduced damage emerges from community context. This differs from chemical defense produced by the focal plant itself and from camouflage based solely on matching an abiotic back

Ref: Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, Begon et al., 5th Ed., Ch. 8-13

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SPECIES INTERACTION

A grazing deer is an example of:

A deer consuming grasses, herbs, leaves, or shoots is functioning as a herbivore because its food comes from living plant tissue. Herbivory is a consumer-resource interaction that usually removes only part of a plant, allowing the individual plant to survive, unlike a predator that commonly kills one prey animal per feeding event. Deer may occasionally ingest nonplant material, but their morphology, rumen microbiota, and typical diet are adapted for processing cellulose-rich vegetation. A parasite maintains a prolonged intimate association with a host, whereas an omnivore routinely obtains sub

Ref: Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, Begon et al., 5th Ed., Ch. 8-13

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Ecosystem Efficiency and Decomposition

Which ecosystem shows higher herbivore consumption efficiency?

Herbivores in many aquatic systems consume a larger fraction of primary production than terrestrial forest herbivores. Phytoplankton are small, rapidly renewed, nutrient-rich, and poorly defended by lignified structural tissue, so much of their production is accessible to zooplankton. In forests, a large share of plant production enters wood, roots, and chemically defended leaves and therefore bypasses grazers into the detrital pathway. The comparison concerns consumption efficiency, not necessarily total consumer biomass. Environmental effects are often nonlinear; drought suppresses microbial

Ref: Fundamentals of Ecology, Odum & Barrett, 5th Ed., Ch. 3

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