Central and Northern European caterpillar assemblages show strong phylogenetic structure

Phylogenetic diversity metrics have been used to tackle an increasing number of questions in ecology and evolutionary biology. Here we present a novel use of phylogenetic diversity metrics namely the investigation of insect herbivore assemblages on select plant species in order to investigate possible drivers shaping the phylogenetic structure of those assemblages.

We investigated the phylogenetic structure of lepidopteran herbivore assemblages on 208 species of central European vascular plants. A dataset of 2553 species of Lepidoptera from 68 families, comprising 8584 individual herbivore-host associations, was analyzed for patterns of phylogenetic α- and β-diversity in relation to plant growth form, plant phylogeny and the accumulation of some characteristic major classes of secondary plant metabolites.

Distinct patterns of phylogenetic β-diversity were detected when plants were partitioned into three growth form categories (graminoid, herbaceous, and woody). In contrast, groupi...