Related herbivore species show similar temporal dynamics

1.Within natural communities, different taxa display different dynamics in time. Why this is the case we do not fully know. This thwarts our ability to predict changes in community structure, which is important for both the conservation of rare species in natural communities and for the prediction of pest outbreaks in agriculture.

2.Species sharing phylogeny, natural enemies and/or life history traits have been hypothesized to share similar temporal dynamics. We operationalized these concepts into testing whether feeding guild, voltinism, similarity in parasitoid community, and/or phylogenetic relatedness explained similarities in temporal dynamics among herbivorous community members.

3.Focusing on two similar data sets from different geographical regions (Finland and Japan), we used asymmetric eigenvector maps as temporal variables to characterize species- and community-level dynamics of specialist insect herbivores on oak (Quercus). We then assessed whether feeding guild, voltin...