title: Responses of community-level plant-insect interactions to climate warming in a meadow steppe.
abstract: Climate warming may disrupt trophic interactions, consequently influencing ecosystem functioning. Most studies have concentrated on the temperature-effects on plant-insect interactions at individual and population levels, with a particular emphasis on changes in phenology and distribution. Nevertheless, the available evidence from the community level is limited. A 3-year field manipulative experiment was performed to test potential responses of plant and insect communities, and plant-insect interactions, to elevated temperature in a meadow steppe. Warming increased the biomass of plant community and forbs, and decreased grass biomass, indicating a shift from grass-dominant to grass-forb mixed plant community. Reduced abundance of the insect community under warming, particularly the herbivorous insects, was attributed to lower abundance of Euchorthippus unicolor and a Cicadellidae species resulting from lower food availability and higher defensive herbivory. Lower herbivore abundance caused lower predator species richness because of reduced prey resources and contributed to an overall decrease in insect species richness. Interestingly, warming enhanced the positive relationship between insect and plant species richness, implying that the strength of the plant-insect interactions was altered by warming. Our results suggest that alterations to plant-insect interactions at a community level under climate warming in grasslands may be more important and complex than previously thought.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.|School of Life Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.|Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.
authors.forename: Xuehui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.
authors.forename: Deli
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan 475004, China.
authors.forename: Shiqiang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China.
authors.forename: Jixun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D057232:Global Warming; D065948:Grassland; D006430:Hemiptera / Q000502:physiology; D060434:Herbivory / Q000502:physiology; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena