Multiple dimensions of biodiversity mediate effects of temperature on invertebrate herbivory in a montane grassland

Invertebrate herbivores are important and diverse, and their abundance and impacts will likely shift under climate change. Yet, past studies of invertebrate herbivory have documented highly variable responses to changing temperature, making it challenging to predict the direction and magnitude of these shifts. One explanation for these responses is that changing environmental conditions drive concurrent changes in plant communities and herbivore traits. The impacts of changing temperature on herbivory might therefore depend on how temperature combines and interacts with characteristics of plant and herbivore communities. To test this, we surveyed damage to leaves by invertebrate herbivores on 4400 plant individuals in 220 sampling plots along a 1101-meter elevational gradient. Increasing temperature drove community-level herbivory via at least three overlapping mechanisms: increasing temperature directly reduced herbivory, indirectly affected herbivory by reducing plant-community phylog..., ,