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Item type:Publication, Mountain Ecosystems as Natural Laboratories for Climate Change Experiments(Frontiers Media S.A., 2020-03-31)Experimental studies are needed to empirically examine the effects of climate change on terrestrial organisms and to serve as the basis for predictions and management practices. As such, designing and implementing experimental systems that can simulate complex changes in the natural environment is currently a major area of interest of climate change science. Most climate change experiments (e.g., infrared heaters, open-top chambers) are typically performed within small, controlled environments and often manipulate just temperature and/or CO2 concentration. Other factors are more difficult to control (e.g., wind speed, soil moisture) or are frequently ignored (e.g., biotic interactions), leading to uncertainties in the results and limiting our ability to make realistic predictions about species’ responses to future environmental changes. We examined the natural variation of abiotic and biotic factors along mountain elevational gradients in order to highlight the potential for using these systems as natural laboratories for climate change research and experiments. The high variability of different abiotic and biotic factors along elevational gradients provides a good opportunity to carry out field transplant/translocation experiments aimed at answering some critical questions, including: How will new biotic assemblages affect key interactions and processes? What are the factors that influence species assemblages under novel climates? How do local abiotic factors influence the establishment of species migrating into novel and climatically suitable habitats? Based on empirical evidence, we strongly encourage researchers to take advantage of the natural environmental gradients found in mountains to study the potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on species, communities and biodiversity as a whole. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, How much leaf area do insects eat? A data set of insect herbivory sampled globally with a standardized protocol(Ecological Society of America, 2021-04-01)Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al., in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory, have compiled published studies regarding foliar removal and sampled data on global herbivory levels using a standardized protocol. However, in the review by Kozlov et al., only 15 sampling sites, comprising 33 plant species, were evaluated in tropical areas around the globe. In Brazil, which ranks first in terms of plant biodiversity, with a total of 46,097 species, almost half (43%) being endemic, a single data point was sampled, covering only two plant species. In an attempt to increase knowledge regarding herbivory in tropical plant species and to provide the raw data needed to test general hypotheses related to plant–herbivore interactions across large spatial scales, we proposed a joint, collaborative network to evaluate tropical herbivory. This network allowed us to update and expand the data on insect herbivory in tropical and temperate plant species. Our data set, collected with a standardized protocol, covers 45 sampling sites from nine countries and includes leaf herbivory measurements of 57,239 leaves from 209 species of vascular plants belonging to 65 families from tropical and temperate regions. They expand previous data sets by including a total of 32 sampling sites from tropical areas around the globe, comprising 152 species, 146 of them being sampled in Brazil. For temperate areas, it includes 13 sampling sites, comprising 59 species. Thus, when compared to the most recent comprehensive review of insect herbivory (Kozlov et al.), our data set has increased the base of available data for the tropical plants more than 460% (from 33 to 152 species) and the Brazilian sampling was increased 7,300% (from 2 to 146 species). Data on precise levels of herbivory are presented for more than 57,000 leaves worldwide. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this paper when using the current data in publications; the authors request to be informed how the data is used in the publications.