Ecological Archives E096-256-A3
Anne Kempel, Mialy Razanajatovo, Claudia Stein, Sybille B. Unsicker, Harald Auge, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Markus Fischer, and Daniel Prati. 2015. Herbivore preference drives plant community composition. Ecology 96:2923–2934. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-2125.1
Appendix C. Additional results on the relationship between the mean absolute cover of the plant species in the grassland sites and the preference of the slug Arion vulgaris, and raw correlations between plant species traits assessed in the greenhouse and field data on plant cover.
Fig. C1. Relationship between the mean absolute cover of the plant species in the 14 grassland sites in control and pesticide plots (Stein et al. 2010), and the preference of the slug Arion vulgaris assessed in independent greenhouse experiments (measured as goals). In control plots, the least preferred species were, although not significant, most abundant (r = -0.31, P = 0.11, solid green line). In pesticide plots this negative relationship was alleviated (r = -0.22, P = 0.27, solid gray line). Removing the highly abundant Festuca rubra from the data set achieved similar results (Control: r = -0.27, P = 0.18, dashed green line; Pesticide: r = -0.18, P = 0.39, dashed gray line).
Literature cited
Stein, C., S. B. Unsicker, A. Kahmen, M. Wagner, V. Audorff, H. Auge, D. Prati, and W. W. Weisser. 2010. Impact of invertebrate herbivory in grasslands depends on plant species diversity. Ecology 91:1639–1650.