Correlations between physical and chemical defences in plants: tradeoffs, syndromes, or just many different ways to skin a herbivorous cat?
Abstract
Most plant species have a range of traits that deter herbivores. However, understanding
of how different defences are related to one another is surprisingly weak. Many authors
argue that defence traits trade off against one another, while others argue that they
form coordinated defence syndromes. We collected a dataset of unprecedented taxonomic
and geographic scope (261 species spanning 80 families, from 75 sites across the globe)
to investigate relationships among four chemical and six physical defences. Five of
the 45 pairwise correlations between defence traits were significant and three of
these were tradeoffs. The relationship between species' overall chemical and physical
defence levels was marginally nonsignificant (P = 0.08), and remained nonsignificant
after accounting for phylogeny, growth form and abundance. Neither categorical principal
component analysis (PCA) nor hierarchical cluster analysis supported the idea that
species displayed defence syndromes. Our results do not support arguments for tradeoffs
or for coordinated defence syndromes. Rather, plants display a range of combinations
of defence traits. We suggest this lack of consistent defence syndromes may be adaptive,
resulting from selective pressure to deploy a different combination of defences to
coexisting species.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17634Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/nph.12116Publication Info
Moles, Angela T; Peco, Begoña; Wallis, Ian R; Foley, William J; Poore, Alistair GB;
Seabloom, Eric W; ... Hui, Francis KC (2013). Correlations between physical and chemical defences in plants: tradeoffs, syndromes,
or just many different ways to skin a herbivorous cat?. The New phytologist, 198(1). pp. 252-263. 10.1111/nph.12116. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17634.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
John Poulsen
Associate Professor of Tropical Ecology
John Poulsen is an ecologist with broad interests in the maintenance and regeneration
of tropical forests and conservation of biodiversity. His research has focused on
the effects of anthropogenic disturbance, such as logging and hunting, on forest structure
and diversity, abundance of tropical animals, and ecological processes. He has conducted
most of his research in Central Africa, where he has also worked as a conservation
manager, directing projects to sustainably manage natural resources i

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info